Mises Caucus Takes Control of Libertarian Party | Reason - Brian Doherty:
May 29, 2022 - "A four-year battle for control of the Libertarian Party (L.P.) ended Saturday in Reno with a victory for the Mises Caucus at the party's national convention. The faction's chosen candidate for chair of the party's national committee, Angela McArdle, won on the first round of balloting.... McArdle, a paralegal and current chair of the Libertarian Party of Los Angeles County, said in her speech to the convention Friday that the government response to COVID has left many working-class Americans thirsty for personal liberty, and 'we don't want to ignore them.' They have, she argued, 'low-resolution views of freedom…and we need to bring that vision into focus by communicating our message clearly and by supporting our candidates and affiliates.'
"While McArdle was the Mises Caucus candidate, the behind-the-scenes mastermind of its victory was caucus founder and leader Michael Heise. His disapproval of William Weld, Gary Johnson's running mate in 2016, was an initial inspiration for the caucus' launch.... The caucus's official platform is plumb-line libertarian, but its foes say that too many Mises Caucus members and fans downplay libertarian positions that might offend the right, are intentionally obnoxious and bullying...., The sense the caucus is soft on or actively encourages racism attracted the attention of the Southern Poverty Law Center just before the convention began, which aired the concerns in a story reported with cooperation from many Libertarian Party members upset with the Mises Caucus. Both Heise and Mises Caucus stalwart Joshua Smith, who won the vice-chair election Saturday, denied the charges of racism.
"Heise said in a phone interview prior to the convention that the basic vibe they are seeking is online youths into edgy comedic podcasts, a new counterculture for whom the old L.P. holds little appeal. Heise believes that the current rumored frontrunner for a Mises Caucus–approved presidential nominee in 2024, comedian and podcaster Dave Smith, is so well-connected to the Joe Rogan world that legacy respectable mainstream media will be meaningless for party messaging moving forward.
"In his nominating speech for McArdle before the vote, libertarian antiwar author and podcaster Scott Horton insisted that he's seen thousands of new convention-attending members energized by the Mises Caucus in the last couple of years.... Meanwhile, during that same period, fierce factional dueling has played out in hundreds of hours of podcasts, hundreds of thousands of words of tweets and Facebook threads, and often on the business listserv of the Libertarian National Committee (LNC) itself. One such fight, summed up at length in Reason in June, involved a faction of non-Mises libertarians in New Hampshire attempting to create a new L.P. affiliate so that the national party could disaffiliate the Mises-dominated one and recognize the new one. The gambit, which ultimately failed, led to the resignation of then-national chair Joe Bishop-Henchman and caused one of the party's few elected officials, Dekalb, Illinois, City Clerk Sasha Cohen, to quit in protest as well, saying 'we are a big tent party, but no tent is big enough to hold racists and people of color, transphobes and trans people, bigots and their victims.'
"Despite bad blood, I detected no booing or walkouts today when McArdle's victory made the caucus' victory manifest. None of the anti–Mises Caucus delegates or supporters that I have spoken to at the convention — including people from Illinois, Florida, Texas, Massachusetts, and even Mises stronghold New Hampshire — said that this takeover would make them walk. Two former significant donors to the L.P., Kyle Varner and Michael Chastain, both with decadeslong history in the party, did say in phone interviews that the Mises turn, which they see as importing a level of racist edgelording they have no taste for, has made them stop funding L.P. candidates.... Varner and Chastain see a distinctly right-wing culture and policy bent from the Mises faction....
"The caucus also wants to completely eliminate any mention of abortion.... A document of internal Mises Caucus strategizing that began circulating before the convention explicitly said ... that 'one of the major goals of the Mises Caucus is to make the LP appealing to the wider liberty movement that is largely not currently here with us. That movement strongly rejects wokeism and the word games associated with it. This along with the deletion of the abortion plank will display that there are serious cultural changes in the party that are more representative of that movement'.... (Disgruntled non–Mises Caucus libertarians in Pennsylvania have left the L.P. and formed the new Keystone Party.)...
"Heise wrote on Facebook Friday night that his faction already controls a majority of the LNC, having swept the votes for regional representatives to the LNC in meetings Friday night.... Mises Caucus favorite Caryn Ann Harlos, who was booted by the LNC from her elected secretary position over Mises-related faction fights, re-won her elected position Saturday as well.
"The Mises Caucus people often dub themselves the revival or continuation of the Ron Paul revolution of libertarian ideas in the GOP's 2008 and 2012 presidential races. (Paul spoke at a party the caucus hosted Friday night.)... In those 2008 and 2012 races, however, Paul studiously avoided anything that might be construed as 'anti-woke' and generally avoided talking to his campus audiences about abortion and immigration, where he was at odds with many other libertarians. While the Mises Caucus might argue that the threat of progressive woke thought control was less severe then, the podcaster/memelord edgy-offensive-insult-comedy stance they often embrace is entirely opposite to how Ron Paul presented himself and won his huge audience as a presidential candidate."
Read more: https://reason.com/2022/05/29/mises-caucus-takes-control-of-libertarian-party/
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