Last weekend, the Republican Liberty Caucus had their bi-annual national convention in Orlando FL. After a year away from the LP it was strange being in a room with libertarians again.

The program was about what you would expect: business sessions interspersed with libertarian speakers. The business sessions were much less formal than the LP, probably because there were a lot less kooks and therefore less need to strictly stick to the rules. Way too much time was spent debating the wording of a resolution on immigration reform before we realized we all agree and just turned over responsibility for drafting it to the national committee.

Most of the people there joined the RLC after having left the LP. While there were no guys dressed up in druid outfits, the American Association of Nude Recreation thought it would be a good investment to get a booth at our event. Don’t dwell on that thought too long. Katherine Harris apparently didn’t have anything better to do less than two months before her senatorial election, so she decided to attend the banquet dinner. The restraint shown by the attendees was remarkable. Stephen Moore, founder of The Club for Growth and currently on the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal was the banquet speaker. He had a really good speech especially his stories about working for President Reagan. After the banquet we all adjourned to the bar to discuss the future of the GOP, Iraq, and who we want to be our nominee in 2008. Stephen Moore said some things I’d never expect to hear out of the mouth of a member of the WSJ editorial board, and I won’t repeat them here.

Contrary to what many expected, I did not end up with another title or volunteer position. Robbie, however, is now on the national RLC board. Poor fool. I did volunteer to work on fixing up the national RLC website which frankly looks like it was put together in the mid 90’s.

The RLC has some serious challenges ahead of it. Most of the work is being done by the national chair as his full time job. The fund raising is so lax that the Vice Chair of the National Libertarian Party did an impromptu fundraiser for us on the last day. Its pretty clear that most of the effort going into the RLC is at the state level. I’m fine with that. One of the LP’s biggest problems is that the national party is too prominent. What’s the point of running candidates for federal office when they can’t even get someone elected to the state legislature? The RLC needs to focus on the state level and leave the federal stuff to groups like the Club for Growth and the Republican Study Committee.