Bill Weld says it’s so obvious: the conservative leaders searching in vain for a way to avoid supporting presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump should offer their endorsements and cash to the Libertarian Party ticket.

This year, Weld joins another former two-term Republican governor, Gary Johnson of New Mexico, on a ticket the third-largest U.S. political party hopes will give Trump and presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton a run for their money.

Weld, the vice presidential candidate and Massachusetts’ governor for most of the 1990s, tells U.S. News supporters of individual freedom, free trade and a cautious, level-handed foreign policy have no other choice.

“We’re not chopped liver -- we’ve both run twice in blue states and got elected as Republican governors,” he says. For disaffected Republicans, he says, “we bring them just about everything they need unless they are evangelicals, which we are not.”

Libertarians sense an unusual opportunity this year with Trump alienating many leaders of the Republican Party and also with uncertainty about the outcome of a longrunning FBI investigation into Clinton's email practices as secretary of state.

Republicans who refuse to support Trump, such as Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol, who did not respond to an email seeking comment, have struggled to recruit a credible independent conservative candidate.

The 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney, another former Massachusetts governor, this weekend is meeting with figures opposed to Trump. Romney called Trump "a con man" in a last-ditch effort to derail his candidacy.

Meanwhile, Republican leaders who have belatedly endorsed Trump -- including House Speaker Paul Ryan and many senators -- recoiled this week after the billionaire questioned the impartiality of a judge born in Indiana but has Mexican heritage.

Weld says the so-called "never Trump" movement has had less than two weeks to jump aboard since the Libertarian nominating convention, but that he feels they might.

“There are a lot of people there who should find our message appealing,” he says. “Realistically, we’ve got to raise tens of millions of dollars to show we can be competitive on the national level…. If that happens, you’ll see us creep in the polls.”

After crossing 1 million votes with Johnson as the nominee in 2012, Libertarian optimism may not be entirely ludicrous.

Weld believes most Republicans are comfortable with Libertarian positions in favor of maintaining legal access to abortion and same-sex marriage, matters that have been settled by Supreme Court rulings, and three recent polls have the Johnson-Weld ticket polling at what would be historic highs for the party.

A Fox News poll released Thursday found Johnson-Weld at 12 percent against 39 percent for Clinton and 36 percent for Trump. A Morning Consult poll published Tuesday put Johnson at 10 percent. And a poll conducted May 31-June 1 by Rasmussen gauged support at 8 percent.

Weld’s nomination was opposed at the party’s convention by some activists who worried about him recently joining the movement, with clear references to Bob Barr, the former congressman who repented a drug-prohibitionist, gay-marriage-banning, Patriot Act-supporting past and won the party’s 2008 presidential nomination before rejoining the Republican Party.

Weld does have a past he regrets.

As a prosecutor in the ‘80s, he says, “I was Mr. Mandatory Minimum. I felt the sentencing had become too lax and I did a lot of work to get mandatory minimums, which drove the judges crazy because it cut into their discretion…. But I’ve come to think our prisons are overpopulated with people there for possessory drug offenses.”

On sentencing reform, he says, “I’ve got the zeal of a gradual convert.”

Weld along with Johnson support marijuana legalization, a position with majority support in national polls that distinguishes them from Trump and Clinton.

The Libertarians also are the only candidates to support the pending Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal -- which Johnson's campaign confirms, despite his discomfort with what he considers a lack of transparency and “crony capitalism” provisions.

Libertarians generally support maximum personal freedom, but Weld side-steps some matters that excite the third-party faithful.

Should law-abiding Americans be allowed to carry weapons in churches, movie theaters and schools? “Not my issue, it may be a Gary issue,” he says. “It’s something that doesn’t play in the Northeast so it never crossed my desk.”

Return to the gold standard? “To me that’s theoretical.”

Marriage equality for polygamous couples? “I don’t think any state will go there,” he says, joking: “If I so much as start talking publicly about men having two wives, I’m going to have zero wives, so I won’t go there.”

He has an easier time addressing marriage equality for consenting incestuous couples. “Nah. That’s N-A-H -- didn’t have to think about that one,” he says.

Though some libertarians support legalization -- or at least decriminalization -- of all drugs, Weld declines to support legalizing cocaine. “At this point I think marijuana is enough of a step for me,” he says.

On a potential pardon for exiled mass surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden, Weld is noncommittal. (Johnson says Snowden does not deserve prison time.)

“I wouldn’t have said so," Weld says. "I was a prosecutor for a long time -- 7 years -- and that wears off slowly. I think he caused a lot of damage. The question is whether the damage was in the national interest [and] I’m perfectly willing to look into that further.”

Weld says he and Johnson decided both men will have to agree on all -- or almost all -- actions if they assume office.