A conservative third party candidate that gets anything more than 10 percent or so of the vote in any race is likely to give us a Democrat officeholder. I sincerely doubt that any conservative third party candidate will actually win statewide office. Not this year. Not anytime soon.
Perot came out of nowhere. And he was largely nobody with regard to public awareness. Reagan himself was a joke to many but could communicate effectively. Furthermore, he was the honest old grandad. Perot disagreed with him; but, communicated effectively and directly to the people. Perot came out of nowhere and got twice what you estimate now. And the climate is no different. It's ripe for a third party bid with a well spoken candidate. And both parties know it. They also know the conservative base is shopping.. thus the begging scare tactics over how a democrat might get elected instead..
If they're so worried, one would think they'd shape up rather than risk it. They don't care or they would rather than try to blame everyone but themselves in advance. I took psychology and logic. But one needs neither to see how transparent this is. To me, the GOP needs to put up or shut up. They won't and they'll lose. And many here will sit and whine about how it's someone's fault other than the party that they lost.
Boil it down and you have to face up to it. The party thinks it can get away with whatever it chooses to do and will resort to scare tactics to keep everyone on the reservation (thinking that will work) rather than doing what they know they should. Sounds pretty familiar.