Count some of the top national security experts in the country as members of the #NeverTrump tribe.

“When I said ‘never Trump,’ I meant it,” Colin Dueck, an associate professor at George Mason University’s School of Policy, Government and International Affairs, told the Washington Examiner.

Dueck and 120 of his conservative colleagues signed an open letter in March, vowing to work against Trump, who they all saw as “utterly unfitted to the office.”

They’re right. Trump is a nightmare and no good can come of his candidacy.

The letter addressed some of the more alarming aspects of having a President Trump in charge of foreign policy. Issues such as reinstating waterboarding, his comfort with dictators like Vladmir Putin, insults to Muslims, when we need those allies in the Middle East – all these and more make Trump the absolute worst possible choice to lead the free world.

Dueck further opined:

“You could surround Donald Trump with 10 Henry Kissingers, and it wouldn’t matter, because Trump does not have the personal qualities to be a good, serious commander in chief. That isn’t going to change.”

Defense consultant, Bryan McGrath, told the Washington Examiner:

“I cannot vote for him. My approach is going to be that I will write in an actual Republican, not Donald Trump.”

I’ve been hearing a lot of that from social media. “I will write in Candidate XYZ before voting for Trump or Hillary.”

I’ve also been quite vocal on the pages of RedState for months now about my own desire to see the emergence of a conservative, third party candidate. I believed it to be our solution then and I believe it even more strongly now.

“I will happily support any credible third party or independent candidate who is better than Trump or Clinton — and that is a very low bar,” said Paul Miller, associate director of the Clements Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

It’s a low bar, indeed, but we have the chance to correct the mistakes of the dull witted Trumpkin hordes and actually coalesce behind a proven conservative leader.

We all need to be seriously working to make this happen. Trump and his Branch Trumpidian cultists should not have the last word. Trumpism is not conservatism. I will not allow myself to be branded by that stench. Neither should you.