I would love for all the bigger name conservatives (Paul, Cruz, etc.) to go off and start a new party. That would give it immediate recognition/some legs to stand on and get things rolling.
I had to the chance to ask about "starting a viable 3rd party" directly to *Christie Todd Whitman.
She was the Gov of NJ back in the 1990's and was W. Bush's 1st EPA secretary ( 2001-3)
She was giving a speech and book signing of " My Party Too" in ATL.
Only 30-40 people were there so I got to speak with her directly.
Her view was that it would cost too much $$ to make a new 3rd party viable.
Plus, she felt the republican party should be a big tent party and return to reasonable compromise , like Reagan.
I read her book and sadly, her prediction that we'd become even more polarized came true.
A Pew study showed , that back in 2008, we had 147 "centrist " in congress.
In 2016, it showed only 4 were centrist.
The result = GRIDLOCK.
Nothing much gets down and both sides throw red meat to the base to raise campaign $$$.