Despite the stories that continue to make their way into the media, #NeverTrump is not circling the drain. It’s growing.

As Donald Trump continues to show how unprepared he is to be president or, as some like myself claim, show how mentally unbalanced he is, more and more people are saying they’ll never vote for the guy.

However, they’re also saying they won’t vote for his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

Just look at the two videos below and you’ll see why neither one is viewed as acceptable.

Now to be clear, and as I’ve stated several times, I will pull the lever for Hillary Clinton before I’d pull it for Donald Trump. To me, Hillary Clinton may represent the status quo of Obama’s presidency, which we’ve thus far survived by being the opposition party, but Donald Trump is too unstable of a human being lacking of even enough character to simply pretend to be decent, that electing him would destroy conservatism for decades undoing whatever meager rightwing things he may (but probably won’t) do once he gets in office.

But even as I’ve maintained that she would be my hold-the-nose choice when my options are ebola or malaria, I’ve also always said that a 3rd party candidate would be preferable.

What’s disturbing however, is that even as many of us, myself, Ben Shapiro, Bill Kristol, Erick Erickson, and so on, have stepped out and said things about the GOP candidate that virtually guarantee our own ostracization should he win, for some reason, those in a position to perhaps run as a disruptive independent candidate remain on the sidelines.

#NeverTrump, and to an extent #NeverHillary, is about acting on what our conscience tells us as opposed to conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom says you rally behind your party’s candidate and if you dislike them, as I suspect many Republicans are doing in the case of Trump, just quietly get along and hope he loses without your help. That might work in normal situations, but Trump is not a normal situation as we’ve well established.

So to Ben Sasse, Tom Coburn, Mitt Romney, and any of the others, please consider that this isn’t a question of good timing for you or career prospects or anything else. This is a moment that should be seized. And if a comms director who probably needed her paycheck can take a risk in the name of her principles, certainly one of you, or someone I’ve not named, could do the same.

Hell, I’d run myself if I thought I’d survive the vetting process (I wouldn’t).

When in the last 30 or 40 years has anyone seen an electorate this open to a 3rd party candidate? Talk about a unifying opportunity.

People ARE ready for change. If nothing else, for the love of God, don’t make me pull the lever for Hillary Clinton!

I hope that any of these folks that can run are reading this. And I hope they’ll consider that each election the stakes get higher and the quality of our candidates gets lower.

It would be a shame to look back and remember when men were free and say “I could’ve done something, but I found the electoral chances to be minimal, so instead I did nothing.”

Follow @BenHowe