What is a political caucus?
There are two definitions; the one that explains RLC is -
A meeting of supporters of a specific political party or movement. So, we are a group working within the Republican Party to advance Liberty issues.
The Republican Liberty Caucus is a Republican Party Coalition, composed of dues paying registered Republicans, and is often considered an intermediary step for bringing people into the party and teaching them how to assume leadership positions within the party. The Republican Party has many Auxiliaries and Coalitions besides us, including: Texas Young Republicans, Pachyderms, Republican Asian Assembly, etc. The RLC was founded in 1991 and at the Federal level functions as a Political Action Committee.
To the best of my knowledge, we have no Democrat counterpart.
We do work with some Libertarians and Independents. We worked on policy issues with many non-partisan organizations. We formed coalitions based on the policies we are trying to advance.
RLC has worked with Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania. Current Liberty Caucus members in Congress include Thomas Massie from Kentucky and Tom McClintock from California. We have also worked with Representative Justin Amash, who left the Republican Party to become a LIbertarian.
To be Liberty Caucus
To be a Liberty candidate, a candidate must meet the standards of the Caucus, have a strong commitment to individual liberty, small government, and free enterprise. They must also be willing to agree to the Liberty Compact, which was inspired by the late Senator Barry Goldwater. It is a pledge to restore liberty, not restrict it; shrink government, not expand it; reduce taxes, not raise them; abolish programs, not create them; promote the freedom and independence of citizens, not the interference of government in their lives; and observe the limited enumerated powers of the Constitution, not ignore them.
But that moves into governance, and most people do not understand the difference between governance and politics.
Political Parties are private organizations.
Political Parties do not get funds from the government (which, of course, gets all its money from taxes) Political parties raise their own money and rely on voluntary membership. Unfortunately, we don’t actually teach the differences between political parties and government in high school, nor in most universities unless a student is majoring in political science.
Just the other day, a young man I know was lamenting how much money was wasted in political advertising. He said - look how many people they could be feeding with that money.
I explained to him that candidates raise their own money. That political parties do too, and it is not any more reasonable to expect political parties to spend money feeding people than it is to expect it of a football team
The RLC tries to get candidates who think like us in office, but our commitment is more toward advancing the policies we want to see made into Bills and Laws.