No, you missed the rest, the other dynamics suggest the main issue causing his rejection around here is his personality. Trump has concretely achieved (past tense) more things for the Mission than Rand has in this cycle, in terms of taking on the anti-liberty institutional obstacles. Can he get some strategic credit for that, at least?
It appears that the answer is definitively "no".
RPF has descended into cultism. If it doesn't align with dogma, it doesn't count.
Never mind that it's Trump, not Rand or Ron, who successfully challenged the culture of political correctness.
Never mind that it's Trump, not Rand or Ron, who successfully challenged the GOP to reconsider the wisdom of interventionism.
Never mind that it's Trump, not Rand or Ron, who put an end to the Bush political dynasty.
Never mind that it's Trump, not Rand or Ron, who successfully tapped into the actual will of the people, which we're kind of supposed to respect if we are serious about the whole elections/self-government thing.
Never mind that it's Trump, not Rand or Ron, who is successfully busting up the establishment and exposing their players at every turn.
But they will close their ears and ignore actual changed realities in our favor because they don't agree with his motives.
Guys, we had the first crack at this, and the second and third shots also. Pretty much since 2006 onwards this country has been brimming with anti-establishment fervor that was ready to fuel a successful Presidential run. Ron had two shots at it, and Rand had a clear lead and a clear field for a year and folded before anyone but Iowa got to vote.
Just consider the implications of that decision. Rand had been positioning himself to be the "acceptable to the establishment style libertarian". If he were still in the race after Iowa, there have been multiple chances for him to present himself as the responsible alternative to Trump.
Where is he? The indisputable fact: There is
no liberty candidate in the race.
It's time to face up to these realities. All the website policies in the world don't do a thing to change those realities. Our menu items are now: 1) Yet Another Protest Vote; or 2) express a preference between the remaining selections.
It's interesting how the membership has divided on this issue. The risk-takers are all willing to go with Trump - for the sole purpose of moving to break up the establishment, something as in the examples above has actually been happening in real time - while the ones who want to play it safe are de facto preferring Clinton, even though she is by far the more dangerous of the two because she's been planning for this for decades and has already started multiple wars and in particular loves to piss off Russia, while Trump has done none of that.
There's also another group of libertarians who are net favorable to Trump in these circumstances, and that's people who actually worked the campaigns and the party structures from the inside and got the butt end of all the dirty tricks - party, government, media - now being employed to destroy him. Swallowing those tactics now validates
post-facto the use of those tactics against us - it says we don't mind the dirty tricks when we like the outcome. It would be total hypocrisy. Bad when corporate media used to destroy Paul, good when corporate media used to destroy Trump.
The scoring of Trump based in no small part on the swallowing whole of said corporate propaganda, and done in literal terms, completely misses the point. He's basically a stand-up comedian being successful by treating the political system realistically - as the joke that it is. It may well be that in the degenerate state of modern America, this is the
only kind of person who could bust up the establishment.
I believe that
a libertarian in good conscience is thus compelled to prefer Trump to Clinton. There's nothing wrong with helping 3rd parties grow, but if you want to participate in the actual choice that's being made by the electorate in November, it's going to be one or the other. I trust the downside of Clinton being the greater (you can google things like "Clinton Downside Legacy" for a taste) is self-evident to anyone over the age of 20.
If that's a policy violation, well then - see ya, I guess. Good luck in whatever it is you're trying to accomplish here.