Not All Bad Behavior by the Mises PAC is Unique to the Mises PAC

So, here's the latest situation:

1. The (Mises PAC dominated) Libertarian National Committee attempted -- in complete defiance of its own bylaws and with no authority whatsoever -- to insert itself into the internal affairs of the Libertarian Party of New Mexico.
2. LPNM responded first by warning against such outlawry, then, when it didn't cease, by terminating its affiliation with the LNC.
3. The LNC responded to the disaffiliation by pretending that said disaffiliation is merely "alleged," and that it gets to further intervene in LPNM's internal affairs to decide whether LPNM gets to do what LPNM clearly and unambiguously did, and had the authority to do.

Now, that's obviously some bullshit right there, and as very much an anti-Mises-PAC person (aka a libertarian), you might expect me to attribute all of that to the Mises PAC's dominance on the LNC.

But to do that would ignore a good deal of Libertarian Party history.

In the year leading up to the Mises PAC takeover, the LNC was faced with several situations where the temptation to ignore its own bylaws and just do whatever it wanted proved irresistible. That temptation even affected the party's Judicial Committee which, from whole cloth, invented a new power for itself to rule on internal affiliate party matters.

And before that, there was a multi-year conflict in Oregon starting circa 2010, where an impostor organization tried to insert itself as the LNC affiliate in place of the state's LP, with cooperation from the LNC. That one took years to settle down, with the impostor organization sending its own delegation to each national convention and attempting to get itself seated in place of the real one (we saw the Mises PAC pulling similar stunts this year, but the tactic was nothing new).

And a lot of that goes back to 2000, when the LNC disaffiliated the Libertarian Party of Arizona, resulting in loss of ballot access for the presidential slate nominated by the national convention (since LPAZ was unrepresented at that convention, it picked its own slate -- L. Neil Smith and Vin Suprynowicz -- in preference to the convention-nominated Harry Browne and Art Olivier).

After the Arizona debacle, the LNC made some good decisions (largely staying out of internal affiliate disputes for a decade) and some bad decisions (e.g. filing a fraudulent trademark claim on the name "Libertarian Party" so that it could threaten malicious/vexatious/frivolous litigation against former affiliates in future such scenarios).

But circa 2010/Oregon, we started seeing an increase in the number/energy of LNC members who had joined the Cult of RONR (Robert's Rules of Order Newly Revised), and taken the trouble to get themselves certified as "official" parliamentarians.

They would, for example, insert themselves as individuals in affiliate affairs by "volunteering" to serve as state convention parliamentarians so as to achieve the outcomes they wanted  -- then use RONR as a cudgel to beat the LNC into submission to those goals (even though RONR is only applicable where "consistent with" the LNC's bylaws, these cultists always insist that any random/convenient semicolon or instance of the word "the" in RONR means the party must do whatever they happen to want done).

The current LNC secretary happens to be a member of that cult, and to have re-purposed its doctrines specifically to Mises PAC goals, but again, nothing new or Mises-specific here.

The LNC's unwillingness or inability to abide by its own bylaws, and its at least occasional ability to get away with violating them, was a huge problem long before the GOP "infiltrate and neuter" operation known as the Mises PAC came along. They didn't cause or create that weakness. They're just exploiting it.

Or, to put it a different way, the LNC had proven itself institutionally unfit to function as the national committee of a political party long before the Mises PAC "takeover." That "takeover" may finally be bringing the situation to a head, though, and that's probably a good thing.