"The conservative movement will need a new political vehicle" if the Republican Party is unable to make the changes necessary after this election, independent candidate Evan McMullin told ABC's "This Week."
"The reality is that the vast majority of Republican leaders are putting party ahead of principle and putting power over the interests of their own country," McMullin said. "And that's the challenge that we have going forward ... Right now you have a party in the Republican Party that turns away people of different races, turns away people of different religions … The Republican Party knew that it needed to do more to appeal to minorities and to women and millennials, and the reality is it hasn't been able to do that. And, in fact, it's going in the wrong direction, not the right direction, in its nomination of Donald Trump. But then also in standing by Trump even as he continues these bigoted, sexist, xenophobic messages to the United States and people our country."
McMullin, a former CIA operations officer who only entered the presidential race in August, has the lead in at least one poll in his home state of Utah and in the other surveys is running a tight race there with Trump and Clinton, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.
The goal of his candidacy was to prevent either Trump or Hillary Clinton from winning the 270 electoral votes necessary to capture the White House and thus send the decision to the House of Representatives, where he could offer himself as a compromise candidate.
With the latest nationwide polls indicating that Clinton is apparently headed toward a decisive victory, that goal may no longer be realistic, but McMullin said a vote for him "will be a strong message … to Washington that people in this country… still stand on principle, the very same principles that made this country the most powerful and prosperous on earth," and will lay the groundwork for the battle for the future of the conservative movement following the election.