There are two scenarios for the GOP’s future, both of which depend on Indiana and, to a lesser extent, California. The first is that Donald Trump gets the nomination for president, and the second is that Ted Cruz gets the nomination for president.

The first scenario will result in a mass exodus from the party. While the Trump supports do celebrate a majority, they will not be able to win should a candidate that is anathema to the core beliefs of the Republican Party and the conservative movement cause a significant chunk of voters to simply stay home on election day.

The second scenario will cause that majority of Trump supporters to attack anything and everything that opposes Donald Trump, including tearing down what remains of the Republican Party. They will oppose literally anything that dares run as a Republican, they will get louder, more violent, and more insane. They will bring ruin to the party.

Whether we get a civil war or a mass exodus, the result is the same: The party will be left on life support at best.

Rush Limbaugh spoke about the second scenario yesterday:

If that ever happens, we are gonna see a nuclear explosion like you’ve never seen before. Because if they think what’s happened now is cheating and rigging the game, with Trump leading everything and nobody even close to him throughout the entire primary process — and nobody gets closer than 300 delegates, and then somehow on the first ballot he doesn’t get to 1,237, maybe he gets to 1,150 — and they don’t let him have it, and they go to the second ballot and all this work that Cruz has done produces 1,250 and he wins it on the second ballot?

Holy smokes! The blowback that will happen then, the backlash? That will be the end of the Republican Party. There are results. There is… I mean, there are consequences to all this. I’m not speaking about any of this in a vacuum, folks. All of it has consequences. That…? Whew! I shudder to think. That would end up being one of the most dramatic political conventions ever to be on TV. It might make the Watts and Rodney King Riots look like Romper Room when it was all over, if something like that actually happened. But that is all Cruz can do.

But no one is willing to talk about the first scenario, which is infinitely more interesting to us here at RedState, and to conservatives in general. What happens if Trump gets the nomination? Where do these other voters go? What will become of the Republican Party when a sizable chunk have simply left?

They could flee to another party – creating their own or joining another, like the Constitution Party or the like. Perhaps the Libertarian Party will see an uptick in registrations. However it goes, you will see the formation of another party that will be able to compete in ways others simply have not. Why? Motivation.

The process has been constructed to force out serious third party bids. But, that won’t work if there is a sizable base that is properly motivated. It can throw the process out on its ears. And that is the best option. The other option those voters have? Stay home.

And they’ll do it. Having someone who is so utterly despicable not just as a candidate but as a human being is enough to make people give up completely. That would irreparably harm the great strides we as a movement have made in the past several years.

There is, however, a third option for these voters, though it is likely not one that will be popular among them at the moment: Stay.

After all, we as a movement are used to fighting our own, right? The leadership will change, but the ideas we fight for don’t. I get why people want to leave – hell, my state’s own party has caused me to switch registration a time or two – but isn’t insurgency a lot more fun than going off to raise an army elsewhere?

This is the most dire time our movement has faced, and one way or another, it’s going to end up with a lot of sad and angry people. But those who are true conservatives, who have been fighting to make a change in our nation, it’s not the time to run. It’s time to fight harder.