[highball]

The Dem's would LOVE IT if we tried to form a true Conservative Party. It would be like the Conservative Party in New York, but on a national scale. The non-Dem vote would be split, and the Dem's would sweep every election.

That's not actually true. The Conservative Party in New York State runs the same candidates as the GOP in most if not all cases, so there's no danger of splitting the vote. It's just that the candidate knows what percentage of his support comes from the mainstream moderate GOP and how much from self-identified conservatives.

[C. Edmund Wright]

Yes, but thats NOT the model implied by the OP