“How the Libertarian Party Lost Its Way”| The Libertarian Party has been overtaken by it’s far-right wing and it’s destroying the party

I know people tend to dismiss the Libertarian Party as “Republicans who just smoke weed”, but the party has genuinely kept socially liberal views. In 1976, they were calling for the end of gay discrimination! Some of the state chapters have left to start the Liberal Party USA as a result of this. However, the Libertarian Party has just elected a new vice chairman who seems more moderate socially and pragmatic. However, the new chairman is still a part of the Mises Caucus slate. Hopefully, the party will continue to uphold its legacy

Key Points from the Article : 

>The Libertarian Party’s biennial national convention in Washington, D.C., last month was a snapshot of a minor political party in the midst of a major identity crisis.

>The fractured party reelected the Mises Caucus’ Angela McArdle as chair but also selected as its presidential standard-bearer Chase Oliver, a gay 38-year-old antiwar activist and former Democrat who had pushed the most recent U.S. Georgia Senate race into a runoff election eventually won by a Democrat.

>In the past three presidential elections, the Libertarian candidate appeared on all 50 state ballots plus the District of Columbia, finished in third place, and was backed by every state L.P. affiliate. None of that seems likely to happen this year.

>Oliver’s critics say he’s culturally woke and was insufficiently opposed to the COVID regime of lockdowns, vaccine mandates, and masking. ”

>”Donald Trump says he’s going to put a Libertarian in a Cabinet position. He came out and spoke to us. He said he’s a Libertarian. He has basically endorsed us,” McArdle said in a June 3 video address. How did the party get here, to a place where its chair is openly cheering on victory for the decidedly nonlibertarian Trump?

>The modern-day fracture of the L.P. started in 2017, when a small bloc formed the Mises Caucus, lionizing such figures as Ron Paul and Murray Rothbard. Generally young and extremely online, culturally right of center, the Mises crew exudes visceral hostility toward the state, the Fed, the war machine, and what they see as the philosophically compromised D.C. libertarian think-tankers (pejoratively termed “Beltwaytarians”) who they believe enable rather than meaningfully oppose the “regime.”

>The Mises Caucus arose in revulsion toward the Gary Johnson/Bill Weld 2016 ticket, which they saw as having watered down the libertarian message to the point of being unrecognizable. They were further disappointed by 2020 nominee Jo Jorgensen and downright repulsed by the L.P.’s messaging on Black Lives Matter and COVID lockdowns.

>In 2022, the Mises Caucus succeeded in a self-styled “takeover” of the party at its convention in Reno, after which the victors wasted little time inflaming the sensibilities of what they saw as the losing libertines. No more overemphasizing the importance of sex work, abortion, or free-flowing immigration, positions the new guard either disagreed with or felt needlessly alienated potential allies.

>But the Reno Resetters, in their bid to reinvigorate the party, were doing plenty of alienating of their own—of longtime Libertarian Party donors and volunteers who did not share the Mises Caucus’ preference for meme clapbacks and helicopter jokes.

>”In April 2022, the last full month before the Mises Caucus takeover, the L.P.’s end-of-month financial report listed revenues of $125,542,” reported Reason’s Brian Doherty last month. “In April 2024, that figure was $84,710, a drop of nearly one-third. The number of sustaining members (those who have donated at least $25 in the past year) has fallen from around 16,200 in April 2022 to 12,211 in April 2024.”

>Some of those legal expenses are coming from the national party suing a faction of the Michigan L.P. that’s not under Mises Caucus leadership, but which insists it is legally the state party affiliate. In Michigan, a Mises-affiliated person, Andrew Chadderdon, in 2022 ascended to state chair, due to resignations on the state board. Despite a critical mass of the state delegation voting to remove Chadderdon, the national party continued to recognize him as chair. The national party filed a lawsuit; the state party has been holding separate conventions ever since.

Article about the new election and chairman: [https://reason.com/2025/02/04/libertarian-party-gets-new-national-chair-after-angela-mcardles-surprise-resignation/](https://reason.com/2025/02/04/libertarian-party-gets-new-national-chair-after-angela-mcardles-surprise-resignation/)

!ping SNEK