Yes, Donald Trump is the front-runner. And yes, the math is on his side as most likely to win the nomination. As someone who participated in the Republican Party caucuses this past Tuesday as a vocal leader of the #NotTrump coalition, I understand and share your frustration with Trump's candidacy. However, I think you deeply and fundamentally misunderstand the conservative mind-set which has led to his front-runner status.
"This was a better idea than Trump steaks!"
If Trump supporters are voting for him because they believed the GOP failed during the era of President Obama, it is not because of a lack of ingenuity or smart policy ideas. Rather, they are voting for him because they feel that GOP leadership has not done enough to fulfill their promise to stop Obama. Just look at who is running just behind Trump in the delegate count. How else can you explain Senator Ted Cruz being the closest person to ascending past Trump? Cruz's signature achievements are his failed attempts to shutdown the entire government over Planned Parenthood funding and funding for the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).
During the past four years, Republicans have watched the rise of ISIS, the attacks on Paris, an attack on American consulate (Benghazi), and a nuclear deal with Iran happen. All of these events have resurrected post 9/11 anxieties about the security of our country. On the domestic front, people have felt threatened by illegal aliens and riots/police protests. And economically, people's wages are still largely stagnant. And Obama's signature achievement, while granting some people with healthcare who were shut out of the market ten years ago, has done nothing to stem the skyrocketing costs that the majority of Americans are paying for health insurance. You may accuse the GOP of fear mongering, but the anxieties of conservatives are more legitimate than you'd like to admit.
Loyalty and trust are paramount to values voters. And the general mood is that the majority of GOP establishment figures are now seen as liars, promise breakers, and co-conspirators for their inability to stem the tide of these trends and quell these anxieties. In the current political paradigm, reasonable policy-positions that makes the base uncomfortable (Rubio's Gang of 8 Immigration Bill, Kaisich's Medicare Expansion, Boehner's Debt Ceiling and Shutdown Stopping Deals, Huntsman's embrace of Climate Science ect) is magnified as heresy. In the meantime, absurd rhetoric like claims that illegal aliens are mostly rapists and murders (Trump) and that we ought to carpet-bomb the Middle East until the sand glows in the dark (Cruz) are not seen as gaffes but as resolute leadership if the base agrees with the general sentiment. And lacking a sense of "political correctness" is seen as a positive because it is a sign of authenticity.
(Cruz's Foreign Policy Platform)
I wish there was a simple solution, but there is not. As much as Trump might embarrass the GOP establishment, they are not quick to criticize him. His core positions (deep tax cuts, border security, a slowdown of immigration, and a strong military response to ISIS) are consistent with the rest of the conservative movement.
A libertarian challenger is certainly not the answer. While I greatly admire Representative Amash, I think Ron Paul proved the absolute ceiling of libertarian support in the GOP is around 20%. His son Rand, who had the most libertarian-ish convictions this time around, was resoundingly defeated in the primaries. While many people hold libertarian views, not many people self-identify as libertarian. A classic libertarian position of being skeptical of foreign interventions in the Middle East and a desire to reign in wasteful military spending are non-starters in today's GOP. Senator Lindsey Graham even ran for president specifically to thwart a possible Rand Paul bid saying his presidency would be a threat to national security. Furthermore, libertarians as a whole are not an ideologically consistent faction. Most people who supported a mix of Ron Paul or Gary Johnson in 2012 elections defected early to supporting Trump, Cruz, or Sanders rather than supporting Rand. That's because the so-called "libertarian coalition" was made up of a rag-tag bunch of social liberals skeptical of big government, Ayn Rand readers, anti-government crusaders, Koch Brother anti-regulation businessmen, and pro-gun/anti-drug war misfits.
I know that's not a very hopeful place to end but the disappointment is not done, yet. Next up... the Democratic Caucus!
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