Discover Top Posts Tagged with #mises caucus

The former president will speak at this month’s national party convention amid a split in the movement.

David Weigel at Semafor:

Donald Trump will speak at the Libertarian National Convention on May 23rd in D.C., where the third party will gather to nominate its presidential ticket. “This momentous occasion will mark the first time a former President directly addresses our members, candidates, and executive committee,” the Libertarian Party announced on Tuesday morning. “Don’t miss this opportunity to hear insights from a prominent figure in American politics and watch him engage with Libertarian ideals.” The LP invited both Trump and President Joe Biden to address delegates; earlier this year, the California Libertarian Party invited every major third party candidate to its state convention, getting a warm reception from delegates but next to no support in a straw poll. In 2016, when it nominated former GOP governors Gary Johnson and William Weld for President, the Libertarian Party positioned itself as a sensible alternative to the statist Democratic Party and the far-right MAGA GOP. It maintained that position during Trump’s presidency. “Whatever libertarian impulses Trump the candidate seemed to have,” the party wrote in a 2018 statement, “his actual performance as president stands in stark contrast. Donald Trump is the opposite of a Libertarian.” What changed? In 2022, the right-wing Mises Caucus won control of the party, powered by frustration at the Johnson/Weld nomination (which compromised on numerous Libertarian positions) and the party’s failure to capitalize on anger at COVID-19 restrictions. In her speech to the California convention this year, LP national chair Angela McArdle said that she needed to focus on “creative growth” and finding new allies. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s candidacy was appealing to the sort of anti-establishment voters who often voted Libertarian and some members were pushing for him to lead the ticket.

Donald Trump speaking at the Libertarian Party convention is proof that the LP has betrayed its libertarian roots, and this is a result of the far-right MAGA-friendly Mises Caucus getting their hands on the party's apparatus.

See Also:

Mother Jones: Donald Trump Will Speak at the Libertarian Convention. It’s Not as Weird as It Sounds.

Mother Jones: The Spectacular Implosion of the Libertarian Party

#Donald Trump #Mises Caucus #Libertarian Party #2024 Presidential Election #2024 Election #2024 Libertarian Party Convention #Angela McArdle

#life liberty and the pursuit of happiness #liberty memes #libertarian #arnold schwarzenegger #mises caucus #libertarian party #dave smith #ancapistan #ancap #anarchocapitalism #non aggression principle #covid 19 #vaccine #medical tyranny #fuck you no

The party is on life support after a pitiful showing in the 2024 election. While Trump wants to slash taxes and regulations, he also plans t

Ross Rosenfeld at TNR (01.07.2025):

We’re now less than three weeks from Inauguration Day, and libertarians are anxious. On the one hand, the return of Donald Trump to the Oval Office represents the fulfillment of much of what they’ve been preaching for many years in terms of free markets and lower tax rates; on the other, it’s a threat to their very core beliefs about individual freedom and government overreach.

The foundation of libertarian ideology rests largely on two premises: first, that maintaining more individual freedom is an inherent good and should be the ultimate objective of every policy, and second, that government interference in the economy is generally bad and should be avoided. Libertarian economists argue that markets are most efficient, and can do the most good, when the government takes a laissez-faire approach, as any government action is likely to cause unintentional harms—something known as the cobra effect. They are free market absolutists and civil liberty absolutists. So what, then, are they to make of a president-elect who vows to lower corporate tax rates yet threatens to raise tariffs, will seek to abolish vaccine mandates while imposing Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s personal dietary beliefs on food producers, and will reduce the government’s regulation of the economy while jeopardizing free speech?

For many libertarian leaders, both within the Libertarian Party and among the ranks of the literati at the Cato Institute who serve as the movement’s intellectual base, Trump’s autocratic tendencies overshadow his preferences for deregulation and lower taxes. Yet Trump and RFK Jr. succeeded in driving a wedge in the party and culling votes from its nominee, Chase Oliver, who, despite campaigning in all 50 states, failed to get half of 1 percent of the vote in 2024. “There’s a division here,” Oliver acknowledged to me recently. “Some people in our party leadership think it’s better to kind of be the J.V. league for the Republican Party and be a feeder league for them and try to play in concert with the two-party system.” Yet he notes that the Libertarian Party was founded for a reason; it represents an ideology that does not fit tidily with either the Republicans or Democrats but has agreements and disagreements with both.

Though he did not mention her by name, one of the “people” Oliver may very well have been referring to is Angela McArdle, the party chairwoman. According to party Secretary Caryn Ann Harlos, McArdle first met with Trump a year before the election when he invited her to Mar-a-Lago. Trump later accepted her invitation to seek the Libertarian nomination at the party’s convention in May, but his speech was met with boos, and he was disqualified after failing to file the necessary paperwork. Nonetheless, since the election, McArdle has been unapologetic about what she perceives as the potential for progress under a second Trump administration, including Trump’s promise to free Ross Ulbricht, the operator of the Silk Road black market platform, and to appoint a libertarian to his Cabinet (a promise McArdle believes he’s fulfilling with the nomination of RFK Jr., though Oliver and others don’t view the political scion as a legitimate libertarian). Harlos, though suspicious of Trump, also said she’s “optimistic” about the future, while admitting that her optimism sometimes clouds her judgment. (She says she truly believed that Gary Johnson could win in 2016. He finished with just over 3 percent of the vote.) Oliver, on the other hand, is firmly in the pessimistic camp.

“I think there will be some things on the fringes that we might celebrate,” he said. “Things like ending regulation.” But he added, “I think it’s important for us to recognize what regulation is ending. Is it regulation that puts some sort of a safeguard or oversight on things that Elon Musk wants to be doing?” (This is not purely hypothetical. Prior to the election, The New York Times analyzed the vast, interconnected nature of Musk’s businesses and the government, revealing a multitude of possible conflicts of interest that could arise from Musk’s new role.) While concerned about Trump’s second term, Oliver said he is hopeful that once Trump starts mucking everything up, the Libertarian Party can emerge as a viable alternative. Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron, vice president for research at Cato and a Substacker, likewise argues that Trump’s chaos might make libertarianism more appealing to the general public. “I guess,” Miron said, “that he’s going to be good for it because I think the next four years may illustrate how inconsistent his perspective is.”

Miron pointed to the fact that Trump is appointing “finance bros” and Wall Street types to his Cabinet while threatening to drastically increase tariffs if his trade demands remain unmet. “It’s hard to imagine those people really wanting to impose 10 percent tariffs,” he says, since such an action could prove disastrous to their bottom lines. Miron fears that Trump’s policies, rather than genuinely helping the working class by increasing prosperity for all, will instead redistribute benefits to those who have offered him the most support, and it’s evident that right now Trump’s most dependent on the tech billionaire class. Miron’s even bigger concern, though, is that Trump “seems to think he gets to decide on his own, rather than recognizing the limits on presidential powers, constitutional constraints, etc.”

The state of the Libertarian Party is in dire straits, and that’s due to the Mises Caucus turning the party into a 2nd MAGA party at the expense of its historical maximum pro-personal liberty and pro-freedom stance.

#Libertarian Party #Mises Caucus #Chase Oliver #2024 Presidential Election #2024 Elections #Caryn Ann Harlos #Angela McArdle #Cato Institute #Libertarianism

Grooming Hippies to be Fascists: Libertystock and the Crunchie to Far Right Pipeline in Vermont

This is an article written last year about a fascist-in-progressive-clothing festival in Vermont called ‘Libertystock’. This thing is going to be happening again Dec. 12-14 at the Bellow Falls Opera House in Bellow Falls, VT under a new name: the “Liberty Food Fest”. People are more than annoyed by this thing and not only want to get the word out, but also show exactly the kind of people that…

#Liberty Food Fest #Libertystock #Mises Caucus #Vermont

I’ve been reading a lot more Reason articles recently and I notice they sometimes get pissy about the Mises caucus in their writing. It’s funny but, also sad as well since they do some good work still.

#reason #reason magazine #libertarian #mises #mises caucus #getting pissy in their writing #its funny to see them be petty about it but at the same time i think you guys are better than this #assmad

HeLP!?!?

Though the Libertarian Party runs candidates for public office, almost never do they get elected to major positions. Sure, its recent presidential tickets have pulled in a few million votes more than in previous runnings, and Libertarian candidates around the country do sometimes poll in high enough numbers that they might seem they make the difference between the winner and loser major party…