There might be a well-advertised "split" within the Republican Party, but it is not evenly split.  The vast majority of the party is now on the Sarah Palin mean-spirited "government is evil" fundie faux-populist racist "side".  I don't know about the constituency at large, but I do know this about their political leaders and pundits.   There is a very thin slice of "moderate Republicans" (RINO's, according to the mainstream-cum-fringe majority), and those Republicans will hold virtually no power at all in the party in 2012 (if they're still even Republicans and/or elected Republicans).  So there really isn't a need for the 90% to abandon the party to the 10%.  The term "Republican" is just a name--just an empty husk to host whatever ideas define the heart of Right-wing ideology.  This husk can be co-opted by the far Right just as they have co-opted the term Conservative (when, in governing, their policies are really anything but traditionally Conservative--they have no morals, they overspend, they are corrupt, they overreach the military, they fight _against_ natural resource conservation, they expand governmental power, and they interfere in private social matters.) 

So if this strain of Palin/Huckabee/Jindal/Gingr ich Conservatism (I don't think Palin will run, but someone like her) were to break off and become a third party, what are they breaking off of (besides the bad memories of a recent previous era when the term Republican became unflattering for them to continue to be called)?  That's not 3rd party reform--that's just officially re-branding Republicanism as Conservatism.  And (even though the stupid media would be duped as always into covering it this way) it wouldn't be any kind of historic revolution for "3rd party importance" because the Conservative "party" got 31% of the vote--it would just be the Right renaming themselves, and essentially the end of the thing formerly called the Republican Party.  But who cares what they called themselves, if there was a "new" national major party that just consisted of what the Republican party is now (and had the same members)?  They should just rebrand themselves RIGHT NOW if they hate the (R) beside their name so much.  Call themselves the "Guns, Jesus, Oil, CEO, Whites Only, Birther" party.   Jeff Sessions (GJOCWOB-Alabama).

The way the GOP must change is that it needs to get away from its current dominant ideology (and its temperament, competence and honesty problems, but that's a different post), rather than just being "shaken up" by a third party on its "Right" (hahahahahahahaha).  Sadly for the country, but happily for those of us who never want to see another crazy Conservative ideologue in Washington leadership, the GOP wants to win elections without changing their positions.  In fact, they want to move as far to the Right as possible (well, they're already there except for maybe a few tiny pockets of air they haven't displaced yet) because they think that is the KEY to winning.  Why fix what isn't broken, yes?  The GOP won't split--they'll just keep moving en masse to the Right and not tell Collins and Snowe and Crist and Meghan McCain and Castle and Schwartzenegger where the new address of their totally rad hideout is.