“Mitt Romney. Or maybe Jeff Flake. Ben Sasse?”
If either of those three unseats Trump and becomes the candidate, I will go fishing that election. Or hell, it might be better to vote for Ocasio-Cortez directly instead of enduring the GOPe death of a thousand cuts.
Ol’ Nestor isn’t suggesting that Romney, etc., could unseat Trump in the primaries. What he is suggesting is that a “moderate” running 3rd party could draw enough Republican votes to ensure the Dem candidate for President would win.
IMO, it would be a political suicide mission.
They won't get the Republican nomination.
The question is whether somebody like that will run as a third-party candidate and take enough votes from Trump to throw the election to a Democrat.
Somebody will mount a third-party effort against Trump, but Sasse and Romney may still want careers as Republicans in the Senate, which would mean not antagonizing the party base.
Flake probably ought to have just given up on politics by now.