Like many establishment Republicans, Juleanna Glover loathes what Donald Trump is doing to her party. A former adviser to George W. Bush, Jeb Bush, and John McCain, Glover announced in a New York Times column that “disaffected Republicans are wondering whether, if they came up with a truly great candidate, they could jump-start a new party, just as the original Republicans did in the 1850s.” Glover claims that her imagined third party would appeal to “centrists” who can’t abide Trump but are also wary of a Democratic Party that might nominate a progressive like Elizabeth Warren or, heaven help us all, Bernie Sanders.

To achieve the goal of bringing the sensible center together, Glover suggests running “a Joe Biden-Ben Sasse independent ticket.” Her other dream candidates include GOP senators Jeff Flake or Bob Corker; GOP governors Larry Hogan of Maryland, John Kasich of Ohio, or Charlie Baker of Massachusetts; and random CEOs and celebrities like Oprah, Ginni Rometty of IBM, or Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase.

Glover’s fantasy league is top-heavy with Republicans because she’s trying to solve a problem that besets the GOP rather than the larger polity. While Democrats have their own share of internal divisions, they have largely rallied together in opposition to Trump. There’s no reason to think Biden would want to split from his own party even if the Democrats’ 2020 nominee were markedly more progressive than he is.



But Republican politicians like Flake, Corker, and Kasich are clearly disturbed by the Trumpization of their party, and so might plausibly be open to running for a third party. How successful would they be, though? Flake’s feud with Trump has turned him into a toxic figure, so unpopular in Arizona that he is not seeking re-election. Any renegade Republican who challenges Trump would feel the wrath of the right-wing noise machine, being attacked as a Judas from the likes of Fox News, Breitbart, and Rush Limbaugh.

A third party led by the likes of Flake and Dimon would be nothing but a rump Republican Party, combining the least popular parts of the existing GOP agenda. Such a party might be more polite than the Trumpized GOP, but it would have no mass appeal.