They'd just (re-)take the Libertarian Party if they were going to do that.
I agree with this. If they were forced to abandon the Republican Party for whatever reason they would probably latch on to the Libertarian Party, which is much more representative of their actual views.
But I really don't see abandonment of the Republican Party happening. It would require too much work to build up a third party to make it nationally competitive against both the Republicans and Democrats, not to mention convincing a significant chunk of the population to vote Libertarian.
