Fwd: Thoughts on Delaware and the LNC from LPD Member Steve Newton

[Will McVay]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Will McVay <will....@lpdelaware.org>
Date: Fri, Dec 3, 2021 at 12:17 PM
Subject: Thoughts on Delaware and the LNC from LPD Member Steve Newton
To: <state...@lp.org>
Cc: <whitney...@lp.org>, Ken Moellman <ken.mo...@lp.org>, <tim....@lp.org>, <richard.l...@lp.org>, <laura...@lp.org>, Valerie Sarwark <valerie...@lp.org>, <joshua...@lp.org>, <erik.r...@lp.org>, <chris....@lp.org>, <steven....@lp.org>, <dustin...@lp.org>, <jeff....@lp.org>, Susan Hogarth <susan....@lp.org>, <john.p...@lp.org>, <erin....@lp.org>, <rich....@lp.org>, <alex....@lp.org>, <david....@lp.org>, <jared...@lp.org>, TJ Ferreira <tj.fe...@lp.org>, <otto.d...@lp.org>, <matthew...@lp.org>, <john.w...@lp.org>, <pat....@lp.org>

I have copy/pasted this from a Facebook post by LPD Member Steve Newton:

I have been thinking about Susan Hogarth’s motion for the LNC to take coercive measures against the LPD until specific actions are taken within our state.
Here is the logical and philosophical underpinning of her motion:
—A majority of the duly elected members of the LPD State Board engaged in what she asserts to have been unethical behavior to disfranchise people within their party that those board members assert were engaging in unethical behavior.
—This led to rival claimants to being the legitimate LPD (which is, of course, nothing new — cf. Oregon, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and others).
—The LNC will resolve this issue (should her motion pass) by functionally disaffiliating the existing, ballot-qualified party until the “meeting” process it demands is carried out. By “Functionally” disaffiliating I mean that the national party will withdraw all support from anybody in DE unless and until those actions are taken …
—But Susan et al CANNOT call this a disaffiliation because (a) that would require a 3/4 vote by the LNC (and it looks like she doesn’t have that in hand) and (b) the six-month rule. So what has happened?
—Susan et al are intent upon bypassing the required voting and timing question not just to disaffiliate without disaffiliating, but to assert a completely new and novel power — the ability to require state affiliates to jump through ANY hoop for ANY reason REGARDLESS of whether the bylaws actually give them the power to do so or not. (Cue Rahm Emmanuel — never let a crisis go to waste) —
—In reality the ONLY power over State affiliates granted to the LNC is the nuclear option of disaffiliation, and by the LNC’s own bylaws THEY CAN’T USE IT here. So because SOME BAD ACTORS DID BAD THINGS (allegedly), Susan proposes that the LNC ignore its own bylaws and forge boldly ahead with coercive actions.
Now here’s the truly funny part:
If the LNC actually passes the motion it will not be rectifying a wrong committed by the majority of allegedly unethical but duly elected LPD Board members, it will be engaging in ETHICALLY LESS DEFENSIBLE CONDUCT than the conduct of the people they are upset at.
Susan Hogarth (and her semi-anonymous co-authors, at least one of whom appears to be Michael Helse) have decided NOT TO LET A CRISIS GO TO WASTE by taking EVEN MORE EXTREME ACTION than the majority of the duly elected members of the State Board of the LPD did.
Are you tracking this yet?
This whole issue is NOT about Delaware. It’s really about the LNC.
It’s not like the LNC didn’t have the most libertarian option of all — do nothing and let the courts, the LP Convention credentials committee, and the libertarians in Delaware sort it out themselves.
Instead, like premium-quality statists, Susan, Michael, and others have decided to respond by making up new powers for themselves.
I will be bluntly honest — I wrote the proposed bylaws amendment used to exploit a loophole in the rules and I engaged (along with others) in misdirection intended to make it as unlikely as possible for it to be noticed by the people who were ALREADY ENGAGED IN AN ILLEGITIMATE EFFORT TO DESTROY THE LPD as a libertarian organization.
I didn’t like doing it, but as one of the longtime members they set up rules to disfranchise, I watched them elect a registered Democrat as a Libertarian County Chair while piously condemning Will McVay for the satiric Mandalorian Party created (as had been his Bacon Party, and his Dark Lords of the Sith Party before it) to poke fun at Delaware’s ridiculous election code.
I also watched them formally associate my county affiliate with the Delaware Young Republicans (an organization further to the hard right than today’s national GOP) as well as cozy up to a failed white nationalist, nativist, racist GOP US Senate candidate in Delaware and a loose coalition of folks who have decided it is an acceptable tactic to go to threaten school board members who vote on mask mandates with death sentences (Yes, they actually started chanting, “Death! Death! Death!” at one meeting)
I drew a line in the sand and decided to help exploit what was in the bylaws.
Susan, Michael, and their adherents propose to ignore the LNC’s bylaws entirely.
THEY transferred the question from “what should the LNC do about Delaware?” to “What should the LP do about an LNC that invents its own coercive powers at will?”
You can dislike, disapprove, or even censure the choices I made, and the choices made by the majority of the duly elected members of the State Board of the LPD.
But what you CANNOT DO is stand by in silence as members of the LNC argue that to put out a small fire in the kitchen they have the right to burn down a house … in fact, to burn down any of the other houses in the neighborhood if what the people inside do offends them.
What will they do next? Take the condemnation of bigotry out of the platform? Suggest that trans people should be executed or fed into wood chippers? Demand that the LP adopt anti-abortion rights language? Declare libertarians to be more discriminated against than Black people? Shame sex workers? “Unleash” the police?
Oh, wait …
This isn’t about Delaware any more (if it ever really was).
This is about whether the LNC is actually a libertarian organization.