Donald Trump's supporters believe his success so far in the GOP presidential primaries heralds a rebirth of the real Republican Party, the one that has been lost over the past few decades to the insidious creep of Washington cronyism, incompetence and corruption.

Other Republicans see the opposite: the death of the party of Ronald Reagan, the wholesale dismantling of conservative intellectualism.

They see the real-estate magnate's Republicanism as being all about self-aggrandizing bluster and fear-mongering, and they note that in years past he has expressed liberal views on key issues such as abortion.

As a result, some of them want to do something about it -- like leave the Republican Party if he's nominated for president.

National Review, the publication founded by the late conservative intellectual icon William F. Buckley Jr., tried to derail the Trump train last month by devoting an entire issue to attacking the businessman.

"Trump is a philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP in favor of a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones," the editors wrote. "Donald Trump is a menace to American conservatism who would take the work of generations and trample it underfoot in behalf of a populism as heedless and crude as the Donald himself."

After an attack like that, there's really no wiggle room for an honorable reconciliation if Trump becomes the party's leader. So unless Florida Sen. Marco Rubio or Texas Sen. Ted Cruz somehow manages to overtake Trump in the race for the GOP nomination, there's only one thing for the magazine's editors and like-minded conservatives to do: abandon the Republican Party and create an alternative.

And it is being pondered, to one degree of seriousness or another. Weekly Standard co-founder Bill Kristol first floated the idea back in December.

Crowd-sourcing: Name of the new party we'll have to start if Trump wins the GOP nomination? Suggestions welcome at editor@weeklystandard.com — Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) December 20, 2015

Former Republican New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said he's looking into a third-party run for the White House, though he doesn't have the conservative bona fides Kristol seeks. No other serious names have come to light, but one could certainly imagine Cruz taking up the challenge.

Such a schism in the Republican Party actually has been brewing for a long time. Bill Buckley's son, Christopher Buckley, broke with the GOP in 2008 and announced his support for the Democrats' candidate, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.

The younger Buckley argued that the Republican nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain, had gone too far in his attempts to appeal to the party's far-right wing, noting that the McCain campaign was airing "mean-spirited and pointless" attack ads. Worse, there was McCain's selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as the vice-presidential nominee. "What on earth can he have been thinking?" Buckley wondered, calling Palin fundamentally unqualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Eight years later, Palin has endorsed Trump.

Christopher Buckley isn't the only apostate who might seriously consider following Kristol into a new party. "If Mr. Trump and [Hillary] Clinton were the Republican and Democratic nominees, I would prefer to vote for a responsible third-party alternative," former George W. Bush speechwriter Peter Wehner recently wrote in the New York Times.

The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf offered this week, "It's almost impossible to imagine George Will or Kevin Williamson supporting Trump." Friedersdorf pointed out that Glenn Beck has declared, "I know that I won't go to the polls. I won't vote for Hillary Clinton and I won't vote for Donald Trump. I just won't. And I know a lot of people that feel that way."

Those are some big names in the conservative movement. But you probably shouldn't expect their distaste for Trump to come to much. Party spinoffs have happened many times before, and it pretty much never pans out as planned. Former President Theodore Roosevelt famously bolted the Republican Party in 1912 and ran as a third-party candidate. He came in second, ushering Democrat Woodrow Wilson into the White House. In Great Britain, former Home Secretary Roy Jenkins and MP David Owen left the Labour Party in 1981 to form the Social Democratic Party. For a while it looked like the SDP would displace the increasingly radical Labour, but the new party's performance at the 1983 elections disappointed and it lapsed into irrelevancy.

Republican Party insiders are all too aware of the historical precedents. And the desire to win back the White House after eight years of President Obama nags at them. Former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and other establishment figures have already indicated they can live with Trump as the nominee. And, beyond the leadership, the pull of party allegiance is strong for the average voter too.

"Republicans could nominate a ham sandwich and still get 45 percent of the vote," the Washington Post's Dana Milbank wrote in January.

On Wednesday, New York's Chris Collins and California's Duncan Hunter became the first members of Congress to endorse Trump. "I think you have more Trump supporters in Congress," Hunter said.

Still, not all Republicans will be willing to come in from the cold to warm themselves by Trump's fire. Eight years ago, Christopher Buckley said his father would have understood his decision to quit the party, quoting him as once saying, "You know, I've spent my entire lifetime separating the Right from the kooks."

In fact, the elder Buckley once stiff-armed the GOP himself. Unable to stomach liberal Republican New York City mayoral candidate John Lindsay, he ran for mayor on the Conservative Party ticket in 1965.

He managed to garner 13 percent of the vote.

-- Douglas Perry