A Third Way for the Third Party

In 2019, the SoHo Forum in Manhattan hosted a momentous debate between two personages prominent in the Liberty Movement, Dave Smith and Nick Sarwark. The debate aptly showcased two competing philosophies within the Movement and presaged a significant countercurrent in Libertarianism. Seven years later, we still contend with these opposing philosophies, yet there is a comfortable midpoint which is overlooked.

For those unaware, Dave Smith is a comedian and podcaster, raised in New York City. His rhetorical style is typically brash and irreverently laden with profanity, yet his enthusiasm for Liberty’s ideas is contagious, as evinced by his sizable following. Almost 508K on YouTube, 912K on X, and hundreds of thousands who subscribe to his podcast “Part of the Problem” on Spotify and Apple podcasts. Smith is also able to clean up his rhetoric (and there are figures in this here Liberty Movement who cannot!) for effective appearances as on Piers Morgan, Konstantin Kisin’s Triggerometry and Tucker Carlson. Dr. Ron Paul’s presidential campaign of 2008 gold-pilled Smith, who heard the call to Libertarian activism in the field of culture.

His adversary (then as now) is Counselor Nick Sarwark. Sarwark has the rare distinction to have been raised in the Liberty Movement, as reportedly both his parents were involved in the incipient Libertarian Party. By trade he is an attorney admitted to practice in Arizona and New Hampshire. Clean-cut and well-spoken in mainstream media appearances. He had served as chair (Maryland) and vice-chair (Colorado) for state LP affiliates, and in 2014 he was elected to the world’s most thankless job of Libertarian National Committee (LNC) Chair, in which post he served for three consecutive terms, making him to date the longest serving chair. Sarwark thus interfaced with the Movement in the field of political advocacy for Libertarian candidates and policies. During his tenure, he contributed towards the Party’s professionalization, though ultimately the party’s center of gravity shifted away from him, as will be explained below.

The clash of perspectives during the debate was intense. The debate’s resolution was: The Libertarian Party should never again run national candidates whose views are similar to Gary Johnson and Bill Weld (the nominees respectively for President and Vice-President in 2016). Smith argued pro, and Sarwark contra. Smith emphasized that Weld’s record as a lobbyist for defense contractor Ratheon and his cozy relationship with war hawk Hillary Clinton rendered him unpalatable as the LP’s standard bearer. To his greater point, Smith argued that – as evinced by political outsider and extremist Donald Trump’s victory in 2016’s presidential election – the trend was against centrist insiders, such that it was bad strategy for the LP to run a “conformist” ticket of two former Republican governors of blue states. Smith expressed that the ideal candidate would be someone like Dr. Ron Paul, whose presidential campaign in 2008 tapped into a unique cultural zeitgeist, such that millions of Americans were converted to Libertarianism (myself included, in full disclosure).

For his part, Sarwark proceeded with more nuance. Firstly, he cited electoral statistics. Ron Paul was the Libertarian presidential nominee in 1988, during which campaign he raised $2 million and netted 430,000 votes (0.5% of the popular vote). Gary Johnson in 2012 raised $2.5 million and netted 1.3 million votes (1% of the popular vote), nearly double Ron Paul’s result against similar fundraising by nominal dollars. For Johnson’s second run in 2016, he raised $12 million and netted 4.5 million votes (3.3% of the popular), which covered the spread between the legacy candidates Trump and Hillary Clinton. In short, the LP was incrementally achieving much better vote-to-dollar efficiencies and exerting an influence disproportionate to its small membership (around 600,000 nationwide by membership and state voter affiliation).

Admittedly a slog through statistics is not as exciting as Ron Paul’s vibrant rEVOLution, but that was Counselor Sarwark’s point. Politics only measures votes after everything’s said and done. A political party exists to run candidates. Comedians, podcasters, bloggers and anyone else competing in the cultural field, are measured by how well they “wake” the public up to the issues affecting Liberty.

Hence, there was a mismatch between the debaters in terms of their professed objectives. In Smith’s opening remarks (time stamp 03:15), he says that he does not care about Libertarian vote counts and fundraising, but these metrics are exactly what matter in the electoral context. Yea, there are the only metrics which matter for elections, and a national party’s chair like Sarwark lives and dies by them.

This is not to say that Smith did not make a good argument about unsuitable candidates, or views candidates may hold which would render them unsuitable to represent the Libertarian brand. Even Sarwark conceded during the Question & Answer section that there can come a point of “diminishing returns” for running a candidate who is too off brand for the Libertarian electorate. Though both debaters asked each other who should be the future nominee, neither ventured a named recommendation, and they disputed whether Bill Weld was sufficiently representative of the brand when he ran for vice-president in 2016.

Dispute about this representativeness, of course, contributed to the surge of the Mises Caucus within the LP, which Smith went on to champion as something of a spokesman. Sarwark presages this surge when he mentions that a group of Libertarians were organizing to show up en masse at state conventions to radicalize the party and ensure that its candidates were extremist in messaging.

Twice during the debate, Sarwark used the progressivist verbiage of identity politics to describe certain noxious policies. The USA’s military adventurism abroad is bad because it b0mbs “brown people,” and that the War on Drugs is tragic because it incarcerates “black and brown people.” Yet the Mises Caucus outright dismissed identity politics as inconsistent with Libertarian philosophy which perceives only individuals, not groups. By this individualism over collectivism, the USA’s military adventurism is just as blameworthy if it b0mbs people closer to our founding genetics, and the War on Drugs’ marginalization and disenfranchisement of any citizen is no less or more tragic. In short, the LP’s center of gravity was quickly slipping away from Counselor Sarwark.

Nor did it help that Sarwark divagated down a path of witch-hunting supposed racists out of the party after 2017’s demonstration in Charlottesville. Sarwark and his allies used the LP’s plank which condemned bigotry to clobber suspected racists within the membership. Though the plank also condemned bigotry based on sexism, ageism, orientation and personal finances, the plank’s weaponization engendered formidable resistance since members realized that racism’s goalposts circa 2017 were too fluid to safeguard anyone from the Purge. By May 2022, the Mises Caucus completely swept the LP national convention and removed the plank itself.

Whatever the new directorate’s virtues on some issues, it soon proved ill-suited to the task of running a political party. Turns out that edgelording on podcasts and in memes does not translate well to the electoral arena. In early October 2022, Dave Smith – as a high-profile champion of the Mises Caucus – endorsed Blake Masters, the Republican contender for U.S. Senate in Arizona. This was over the Libertarian in the race, Marc Victor, which shows that the Caucus did not understand the brand it purported to represent (Marc Victor subsequently chumped out of the race a week before the General Election, demonstrating that we Libertarians must also improve our representation of the brand). In January 2023, from the LNC’s board solidly controlled by fellow Mises Caucusers, Vice-Chair Joshua Smith resigned eight months into what was supposed to be a term of two years. In late June 2025, Mises-endorsed LNC Secretary Caryn Ann Harlos resigned 13 months into a biennial term, citing disagreement with Mises-supporting Chair Steven Nekhaila.

Yet by far the worst demonstration of the Mises Caucus’ unsuitability to run the Libertarian Party was behind the scenes in late 2023. This is when the LNC Chair and Mises Caucus devotee Angela McArdle began secretive negotiations with former president Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s heir apparent for 2024’s presidential nomination. A previous article covered the scheme in depth, but the short of it was that the LNC would invite candidate Trump to the LP convention in May 2024 so that he could try to co-opt the delegates to vote for him in the General Election (and of course, some Trumper delegates even tried to cast him as the LP’s presidential nominee; see LPedia’s section on Elections). Next, McArdle would leverage her position as LNC Chair to assist (then) potential Trump ally Robert Francis Kennedy Jr. by not intervening when LP state affiliates dissatisfied with the LP’s presidential nominee Chase Oliver, would refuse to file certificates of nomination with their respective electoral authorities, or (as Colorado LP preferred) file them for RFK Jr. Finally, RFK Jr – who folded into Trump’s campaign on August 23rd, 2024 – would engage in fundraising which partially utilized LP assets, yet some of these funds never flowed into LP coffers as expected, raising the possibility that they may have been diverted to McArdle or some entity under her control.

In January 2025, McArdle resigned as LNC Chair (another resignation long before the biennial term for which she ran) under this suspicion of self-dealing with party funds. The following LNC board later initiated litigation against her to determine her complicity’s extent, if any. Regardless of what that litigation may determine, already McArdle shows intent to steer the LP towards new collusions with the legacy parties and/or their candidates. If McArdle’s proxies slither back into the LNC Board, we are all but assured that the directorate will sideline and undermine native Libertarian candidacies if they prove inconvenient to legacy party (read “Republican”) rivals.

The Comfortable Midpoint

During that monumental debate at the SoHo Forum in 2019, Dave Smith waxed nostalgic about the heady days of Ron Paul’s presidential run in 2008, and correctly so. A septuagenarian obstetrician lit brushfires in the minds of millions of Americans talking about recondite monetary theories. He challenged foreign policy’s orthodoxy within the primary of the party (Republican) which had been largely responsible for such excesses over the past seven years during George W. Bush’s administration. It took admirable courage to stake such positions at that time. Americans recognized and appreciated Paul’s courage, and hundreds of thousands of Americans sought out the thinkers who had influenced him, which like a trail of breadcrumbs, led these Americans to Libertarianism.

Yet against the foregoing fact pattern’s improbability, Smith should realize that a Ron Paul comes around once in a generation, if we’re lucky! It is unreasonable to expect that any party – especially one with as narrow a bench as the LP – could field every cycle a groundswelling candidacy like Ron Paul’s in 2008.

What we can do, however, is steadily grow the party in the interim. Until such time as one of those game-changing candidates in a high-stakes race emerges, we can improve our donor base, increase our membership, develop beneficial media relationships, build our infrastructure and perfect our pitch to the electorate. That way, the LP can attract bold, principled candidates, and have the wherewithal effectively to support their candidacies through to victory.

This professionalization is the comfortable midpoint which we overlook, and it is needed now more than ever. Where and when possible, the LP should run bold, principled candidates, but when a candidate falls short, the ship cannot be scuttled to leave us starting from scratch after every cycle.

No more amateurish caucuses content to vote NOTA against the presidential nominee after their favored contender is eliminated (which would leave state affiliates with no presidential candidate on whose success statewide ballot-access often hinges). No more knee-jerk defections to the legacy parties when some outcome frustrates a caucus. And certainly no more double-dealing with legacy parties and/or their candidates to undermine Libertarian candidacies, which are the whole reason the Libertarian Party exists in the first place.