Why the McArdle Secrecy Over Meeting with RFK, Jr.?

I am a candidate for the 2024 Libertarian Party presidential nomination. My campaign website is www.jacobforliberty.com.

A September 23, 2023, article at dnyuz.com reports that Libertarian Party chairperson Angela McArdle had a secret meeting with Democratic Party presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., at FreedomFest in Memphis last July. The article stated that the meeting, which lasted nearly an hour, “has previously been unreported.”

The question naturally arises: Why would McArdle keep her meeting with Kennedy secret? Could it be for the reasons I pointed out in my recent four-part article “The New Republican-Lite Libertarian Party Heartthrob”?

The article points out that Kennedy is losing badly to President Biden for the Democratic Party presidential nomination and that “his bid against the incumbent president is not seen as competitive.”

Therefore, as the article title points out, Kennedy is now “flirting” with the Libertarian Party with the thought of jumping over to the L.P., not because of any sudden devotion to libertarian principles, but rather with the aim of using the L.P. to launch a third-party bid against Biden and, presumably, former President Trump.

Libertarian aligned?

The article points out that last June, Kennedy told Reason magazine, “I’ve always been aligned with libertarians on most issues.”

Really? 

As I detailed in my four-part article “The New Republican-Lite Libertarian Party Heartthrob”? Kennedy has a deep and ardent devotion to America’s welfare-warfare state way of life, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, food stamps, farm subsidies, public (i.e., government) schooling, gun control, drug prohibition (on dangerous drugs), immigration controls, income taxation, paper money, monetary central planning, trade restrictions, foreign aid, minimum-wage laws, the national-security state, and foreign interventionism (i.e., when it’s in our “national interest).

Indeed, Kennedy also expresses deep and ardent support for Franklin Roosevelt and his socialist/fascist New Deal programs, Red China’s public-works projects, and communist Cuba’s socialist healthcare system and food-rationing system. 

Now, that’s one interesting “alignment” with libertarians, especially given libertarianism’s principled opposition to Kennedy’s statist programs, principles, and philosophy, our devotion to economic liberty, free markets, voluntary charity, and limited government, and our opposition to socialism, communism, fascism, empire, and interventionism. 

The problem, however, is what I have long maintained: that the Libertarian Party has become so rudderless and directionless that Kennedy’s devotion to statism is obviously not considered to be any big deal by some members of the L.P. What matters to this segment of the party is not principles but rather votes. If Kennedy can do what Republicans Gary Johnson and Bill Weld did for the L.P. when they garnered 3 percent of the national vote, then who cares about principles? 

“Liberty-leaning” Republicans

Well, I’ve got an idea. Why not have McArdle also have secret meetings with Republican presidential candidates Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy? Like Kennedy in the Democratic Party, they are losing badly against former President Trump for the Republican presidential nomination. Moreover, there have been prominent L.P. members who have expressed tremendous exuberance for these two “liberty-leaning” Republicans. 

In fact, I’d say let’s throw Blake Masters, the “liberty-leaning” Republican who lost a race for U.S. Senate in Arizona, into the mix too, especially since he received the enthusiastic support and endorsement of some L.P. members in his Senate race. Maybe Republican (and former L.P. vice-presidential candidate) Wayne Allan Root could be induced to abandon his support for Trump and also enter the LP presidential race. And, heck, why not Bill Weld too?

Just think of the massive mainstream press publicity that the race for the L.P. presidential nomination would bring with a big-government welfare-state liberal Democrat who claims to be “aligned” with libertarians and all these “liberty-leaning” Republicans who would be calling themselves “libertarians” once they were seeking the L.P. presidential nomination. (“Publicity, Jacob! Publicity!”)

The Party of Principle and that pesky Pledge

Or course, something would have to be done with the L.P.’s self-imposed motto “The Party of Principle TM.” But hey, why not simply redefine the word “principle” to encompass the statist positions and programs of a “libertarian-aligned” Democrat and “liberty-leaning” Republicans? Who’s going to notice? And if someone does notice, McArdle, as the party chair, could simply respond, “We are a big-tent political party, one that embraces all sorts of positions, programs, principles, and ideologies with the aim of expanding our vote totals.”

Another option of course — one that might be considered more honest — would be to simply abandon the slogan “The Party of Principle TM” in favor of “The Party of Reform” or “The Party of Compromise” or even “The Party of Vote-Getting.”

But yikes! We’d also have to do something about that pesky Pledge that everyone is required to sign as a condition of joining the Libertarian Party. After all, how in the world would RFK, Jr., DeSantis, Ramaswamy, or Masters sign a pledge promising to not support the initiation of force, given that initiating force is what their entire statist platforms are based on? Assuming that honoring a Pledge means something to them, the L.P. would have to accommodate them by suspending the Pledge or just canceling it permanently. 

Restoring the Libertarian brand

In August 2022, I began publishing a series of articles in which I argued that if the so-called “Reno Reset,” in which the Mises Caucus took control over the Libertarian Party, ended up doing nothing more than bringing about a change of management of the L.P., the reset would be for naught. I pointed out that in order to get the L.P. back on the right track, it is necessary to restore the party’s original brand of principled libertarianism and reject the brand of welfare-warfare-state reform and Republican-Lite that has come to define the party for the past 25-30 years. 

I would invite every L.P. member to read that entire series of articles because I believe more strongly than ever that they hold the key to getting the Libertarian Party out of the deep morass in which we find ourselves and onto the road of leading America to freedom — genuine freedom, not the warmed-over welfare-warfare state “reform” and Republican-Lite that passes for “freedom” in some Libertarian circles. To read my series of articles, go to the written blog section of my campaign website and scroll down to August 2022 and begin with the first article in the series, entitled “Restore the Libertarian Brand,” and then work your way upward.

Unfortunately, after the “Reno Reset,” the new party hierarchy did not go in the direction I was exhorting them to take. The result, not surprisingly, has been continued demoralization, strife, conflict, division, and lack of direction within the party. In fact, what better evidence of the rudderless, directionless, left-right (or right-left) drift of the party than McArdle’s secret “flirt” ‘with a left-wing statist even while some of her cohorts are “flirting” with right-wing statists to be the presidential candidate for our party?

Looking for scapegoats

Rather than take individual responsibility for the woes of the Libertarian Party, McArdle recently blamed the party’s woes on the lack of “big-name” candidates inside the L.P. who are seeking the L.P. presidential nomination. That sentiment has obviously led her to “flirt” with the leftwing Kennedy in the apparent hope that he will come into the L.P. and “save us” by becoming our presidential candidate. 

But what McArdle needs to explain is this: What good would come from running a big-government, welfare-state, gun-grabbing, liberal Democrat as the L.P.’s presidential candidate? So what if Kennedy were to get that 3 percent that Republicans Johnson and Weld got for the L.P. ? What difference would it make? Everyone would know that the L.P. got that 3 percent by importing a big-government, welfare-state, gun-grabbing, liberal Democrat rather than persuading people to vote for the genuine principles of liberty for which the Libertarian Party has long stood.

At the same time, the party’s political soul would be black. The only question at that point would be whether it would still be possible to restore it to its original condition.