Other Libertarians have done extensive research into the secretive dealings of the Mises Caucus in their private social media groups as well as their pervasive public events and podcasts. The organization is nominally Libertarian and promotes itself as the heir to the Ron Paul Revolution spawned by Dr. Paul's 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns in the Republican primaries. Dr. Paul, of course, was also the Libertarian Party's nominee for president in 1988 and remains a Lifetime Member of the LP having purchased his membership with a gold coin. The Mises Caucus often claims to be bringing the Ron Paul Revolution and other parts of the "broader Liberty movement" into the LP.
Longtime volunteers of the LP know that Libertarian Party politics is often frustrating. After 50 years, we have achieve a lot but continue to fall well short of our goal of "a world set free in our lifetime". The lives of far too many Libertarian activists have already ended and the world is in many ways less free than it ever was. The "broader Liberty movement" outside the LP is often familiar with these frustrations as well. Whether it's intraparty infighting, an inability to gain traction in the mainstream culture, the perpetual failure to win elections or even break into a double digit share of the vote in three way races against the dominant two-party system, pedantic procedural rituals, or even the inherent contradiction of engaging in power politics to dismantle power politics, there are many reasons the "broader Liberty movement" has eschewed the Libertarian Party for other forms of activism or for nihilistically retreating from activism of any kind to wait to be overcome by government tyranny.
The "broader Liberty movement", however, also contains strains of distinctly un-Libertarian thought. While the established "center" of American politics represented by the Democratic and Republican Parties have established infrastructure in media and academia to weed out fringe ideologies and constructions of reality that don't hold up to factual scrutiny, fringe political movements attract fringe people who may find themselves outside the mainstream for many less charitable reasons than an opposition to the overreaching government authority that animates Libertarians. While the small and institutionally weak structures of the Libertarian Party may attempt to resist being co-opted by conspiracy theorists, bigots, and violent extremists, the "broader Liberty movement" lacks even this basic inoculation and varying communities within that "broader Liberty movement" are beset by these issues, but still at least among themselves include themselves within that movement because of a few shared positions with other such communities, a general resistance to government authority, or a similar ostracization from mainstream culture.
Even the Ron Paul Revolution was beset by these issues. Aside from the problematic content included in Ron Paul's newsletters in the early 90s, when "paleolibertarianism" sought to create an explicit alliance between Libertarians and the populist right that would eventually bring Donald Trump into control of the Republican Party, the 2008 and 2012 Republican presidential primary campaigns also included an unhealthy dose of paranoid conspiracy theorizing, explicitly anti-Left rather than pro-Liberty "own the libs" style anti-wokism, and just enough bigotry to be able to hide behind the excuse that they just didn't want the government to enforce it. The Ron Paul Revolution and much of the "broader Liberty movement" is an explicitly right-leaning political ecosystem and holds many positions that sometimes deliberately aim to alienate the left, but are also contrary to and officially frowned upon by the cosmopolitan Libertarianism promoted by the Libertarian Party. These are your "Republicans with Libertarian tendencies" and Libertarians who, if they do vote, give proof to the generally false claim that Libertarians only spoil Republicans in favor of Democratic victories.
These are the constituencies fueling the Mises Caucus and whom the Mises Caucus is using to "takeover" the Libertarian Party. Upon being confronted, many Mises Caucus personalities try to walk back the "takeover" language to claim that they are offering to reinforce the Libertarian Party rather than take it over, but between the distinct character of Mises Caucus Libertarians and the organizational schism between the Mises Caucus and the rest of the Libertarian Party, the "takeover" language is more accurate. Given any opportunity the Mises Caucus serves first to promote itself and to take advantage of LP resources for its own advancement rather than to reinforce the ongoing and slowly advancing efforts of the LP.
