I think it's too much of a leap to go from Nimrod to Hurricane. We need something in-between that's not a Gladiator. The Vickers Venom looks like a contender.
I don't. By the time you get an interim into service, it's obsolete, and that's even without a war looming. The issue is, as always, timing, it depends on when you initiate the replacement aircraft for the Nimrod. If the FAA wants a high performance fighter for its carriers that can match what was going on aboard, and lets face it, in 1937 there were rumblings within the admiralty about the feasibility of a sea based Hurricane, it has to be done pretty much immediately owing to the time it would take to research a new type and get it into production.
The FAA found itself lumbered with obsolescent types in the beginning of WW2 because of the choices made by the RAF and I reckon the FAA would have preferred to have gone to war with Spitfires and Hurricanes, not Sea Gladiators and Skuas as its fighters. If you wanna avoid that, with the pace of aircraft development as it was at the time, and let's face it, the British were not in a vacuum regarding that, the aircraft has to be a high performance type that is gonna match foreign developments. The Bf 109 has to be the benchmark if a decision is made after it is first known about by the British.