Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute doesn’t relish a general election battle between presidential front-runners Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. He examines alternatives in a National Review Online column.
[P]olls suggest that roughly half of those Republicans who do not currently back Trump would not support him if he won the nomination. Such numbers tend to shrink as the general election draws nearer and the partisan choices become starker, but there is no doubt that many more Republicans than usual are prepared to bolt the party, rather than support a vulgar charlatan who flirts with bigots and casually urges Americans to commit war crimes.
But if Republicans don’t want to support Trump, what are their options?
A very few might grit their teeth and vote for Hillary Clinton. But one suspects that a dishonest left-winger, who doesn’t think the Obama administration is liberal enough, would not be a palatable choice for most. Could they really vote for her knowing that she would, for example, most likely appoint the next Supreme Court justice? Many more might just stay home, but that would not only lead to a Clinton victory, it would almost certainly guarantee Democratic control of the Senate, and possibly even threaten the House.
Some have talked about a more conventional scenario in which a conservative mounts a third-party challenge, but the barriers to such a run are enormous. Potential candidates would have to meet petition-signature requirements, with filing deadlines as early as mid-August. In California, the candidate would have to get signatures equivalent to 1 percent of the total number of registered voters, which could be roughly 178,000. Oklahoma would require signatures equivalent to 3 percent of the total votes cast in the last general election. Any third-party effort would be extremely costly and require an organizational infrastructure that few minor parties have.
