Last weekend, we brought to you the spectacle of Donald Trump addressing the Libertarian Party in convention to nominate their presidential candidate. Donald Trump was not selected.
Who was? Well, after many ballots, the LP’s candidate is Chase Oliver. The Wikipedia entry begins:
Chase Russell Oliver (born August 16, 1985) is an American political activist, sales account executive, HR representative and nominee of the Libertarian Party for the 2024 United States presidential election. Oliver was the Libertarian candidate for the 2022 United States Senate election in Georgia and the 2020 Georgia’s 5th congressional district special election.
Mr. Oliver is the woke opposite of what the dominant faction in the party (called the Mises Caucus, which won most of the internal party seats, again, at this convention) was planning for and hoping for and working towards, but their candidate, Michael Rectenwald, lost on the penultimate round of balloting.
There were many typically political shenannigans involved in the selection, and the state of Oliver’s candidacy is up in the air, at least in one sense: most of the smart money is that he will nowhere reach the 3 percent level in the general election that Trump taunted his booers at the convention.
If he does well, however, that would effectuate a major shift in Libertarian Party politics.
5 replies on “Who Is Chase Oliver?”
Historians of the libertarian community might have interesting discussions about just when the Libertarian Party irretrievably lost its way. Some would claim that it happened in 1975, when the Party chose Roger Lea MacBride over Kay Harroff. Others would say that, though now lost, it might still find its way. For my part, I became sure in late 2021 that libertarians should have no more to do with the Libertarian Party.
Nor do I imagine the creation of a new, more genuinely libertarian party that won’t go off the rails. Even if the Libertarian Party did stand in the way of a properly libertarian party, the fatal trades-off and perverting dynamics would still be there.
“Mr. Oliver is the libertarian opposite of what the dominant faction in the party (called the Mises Caucus, which won most of the internal party seats, again, at this convention) was planning for and hoping for and working towards …”
Fixed, no charge.
The line of opposition here is not between libertarians and the Mises Caucus. I have various objections to the Mises Caucus and, more generally, to those who appropriate the name of Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises for ideas, projects, and programmes that he never advanced. But they are not somehow opposite to libertarians.
If you’d attempted to charge, then you’d be guilty of malpractice or of fraud.
That’s funny. The Mises Caucus folks talk about liberty more than Oliver does. His banner says “EMPOWERMENT.” That’s leftist lingo, woke rhetoric. Doesn’t sound very libertarian.
But maybe he’ll improve.
His behavior could be ill-advised ideologic cross-dressing, but I wouldn’t be surprised were it exposed as Aufhebung.