Inside the Mises Caucus Takeover of the Libertarian Party

The Libertarian Party (L.P.) is under new management, tweeted Angela McArdle, shortly after she became the National Committee’s new chair at its 2022 annual convention in Reno, Nevada, which was attended by more than 1,000 delegates from around the country.

“We’re obviously at a crossroads right now,” McArdle said during a debate for the chair position. “I hate to sound like a scumbag politician…but we are going to move heaven and earth to make this [party] functional and not embarrassing for you. We are going to change the country.”

McArdle, who won her election with about 70 percent of the vote, is part of the Mises Caucus, which swept all the national leadership roles and is now in complete control of the nation’s third-largest political party.

Mises Caucus supporters say they want to “make the Libertarian Party libertarian again,” that it should no longer be concerned about offending progressives or Beltway types and shouldn’t be afraid to reach out to the coalition that elected former President Donald Trump. McArdle says that the party faceplanted during the pandemic by failing to take a strong stance against lockdowns and vaccine mandates and that its messaging is far too tame and conventional to counter the power of the authoritarian state.

“If something like a lockdown or a vaccine mandate happens [again], we won’t whiff the ball and humiliate ourselves and alienate everyone out there,” she said in her acceptance speech.

Critics say they’re shitposting edgelords who make controversial statements just to attract attention and that they have no interest in running viable candidates for office.

“If Angela McArdle becomes chair of the Libertarian National Committee and makes the party welcoming to bigots, the committee she is in charge of will shrivel and die,” says Nicholas Sarwark, the chair of the Libertarian Party from 2014 to 2020 and a frequent critic of the caucus. 

The Mises Caucus’ namesake is the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises, but its members are especially influenced by his student Murray Rothbard. Like Mises, Rothbard was a radical capitalist, who, unlike his mentor, favored the complete abolition of the state. Rothbard also advocated forming strategic political alliances with the New Left in the 1960s and then with paleoconservative figures like Pat Buchanan in the early ’90s.

Rothbard was an enthusiastic supporter of Ron Paul’s run on the Libertarian presidential ticket in 1988. He wrote that the party had become “increasingly flaky…libertine and culturally leftist” and saw Paul’s campaign as a “last desperate attempt” to save the party. But it ultimately failed, in his view, leaving the L.P. “spiraling downward into oblivion.” The Mises Caucus likewise looks to Ron Paul as a political role model, pointing to his 2008 and 2012 Republican presidential campaigns (which generated huge crowds and interest in libertarianism). Paul attended a Mises Caucus event in Reno to signal his support.

“These are the kids who came up in 2008 and 2012 inspired by Ron Paul,” says Scott Horton, a popular anti-war radio host, author, and founder of the Libertarian Institute. It was Horton who officially nominated McArdle for the chair position. “Now they’ve been to college, grown up. They got their own lives and families and things, and they’re ready to move in and take the next step.”

As examples of the kinds of bold messages the party should be sending, McArdle points to Paul’s famous 2007 confrontation with Rudy Giuliani during a nationally televised Republican presidential debate over the root causes of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and when Paul told a Republican audience in South Carolina that heroin shouldn’t be illegal.

“The priorities of the Mises Caucus have always been basically the priorities of the Ron Paul Revolution,” says Dave Smith, comedian and host of the libertarian podcast Part of the Problem, who is also a likely contender for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination. “Being anti-war…[and] with inflation raging, I think is a really good time to be sound on [Austrian economics],” he told Reason. “And then, of course, throughout the last two years, just completely opposing the rise of the COVID regime.”

But when does “bold messaging” become counterproductive trolling? It’s a line that several high-profile Mises Caucus members and official Libertarian Party social media accounts have struggled to identify. 

“I think bolder messaging is important, but we don’t need edgelording,” former U.S. Rep. Justin Amash told Reason.

Amash rode to office on the 2010 Tea Party wave, representing Michigan, and Politico once described him as the “new Ron Paul” in Congress because of his willingness to buck party-line votes on principle. He switched his party affiliation from Republican to Libertarian in his final term, making him the L.P.’s highest officeholder since its founding in 1971. He’s not a member of the Mises Caucus but says they’ve brought new energy to the party and that the important task now is “channeling that energy in the right direction.”

“I don’t think [Mises Caucus members] are coming here because they’re nationalists or bigoted or any of that stuff,” says Amash.