Well, Musk claims to have formed a new political party.
What are everyone’s thoughts? Any chance he could be successful? For that matter, what would success look like?
If he’s willing to spend the money, he might have the resources to make something happen. After all, if this new party could just take about 4% of the seats in Congress, assuming they were equally distributed among red and blue seats, it could be a king maker.
There is exactly one issue motivating this: the GOP having taken away EV tax credits, and his knowledge that the Democrats will reinstate them. I think he’ll do something to make sure those credits return, whether it’s eventually supporting Dems, or submarining Republicans.
Great news. A successful right wing third party would doom the GOP (assuming elections are still a thing and not deemed to be an liberal innovation by the SCOTUS )
My only concern is he’s a comically incompetent douche bag, and creating a successful third party is difficult, but there is one thing about America a ridiculously huge pile of cash and incompetence will succeed where talent and hard work fails.
I think some are making too many assumptions about the politics of the party. Musk certainly has his fascist tendencies, but he also pushes a green agenda. It could be a strange group of bedfellows.
And if it were able to shake up the status quo, it could do some good, even if I don’t like its policies.
Imagine a situation where no one group of legislators has the power to pass bills- they have to find common ground with people from one of the other TWO parties to pass anything. Might not be terrible.
ETA: And the fact that Steve Bannon is not happy about this tells me the MAGAs are worried.
I will say again that I am big time impressed with the creative name he gave the party. (Seriously, what was his rejected option, “The Third Party”?)
Now if he’s actually managed to create a third party that siphons support from Republicans, I can only say Go, Man, Go!
While I’d love for Elon to weaken Trump and MAGA, I don’t see a lot of MAGA folks switching over to this new party. Elon just doesn’t have the cult of personality Trump has. Still, any effort to bring down Trump or MAGA, if that’s what Elon is trying to do, is okay by me..
The electoral system is largely run by the two existing parties at the state level. Actually getting a third party going that is anything beyond a joke like the Libertarians is all but impossible as a matter of 50 states’ laws.
As a matter of game theory, given our individual constituencies and “candidate with the most votes wins” system, three party contests are not stable. The third party will either fail abjectly or somehow a merger will reduce the party count to two. It might take a few electoral cycles = 20 or 30 years for this to settle out.
But no stable competitive three-party system can exist until we switch our voting system and/or our system of representation to something less 17th century.
Elon Musk only “pushes a green agenda” when he believes he can make money off of it; otherwise, he doesn’t give a good whore’s fuck about environmentalism or conservation as evidenced by the careless disregard for issues SpaceX has caused in the South Texas Coastal Habitat and the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge, or his disregard for environmental concerns in constructing the Tesla facility in Germany. Indeed, the entire reason Musk moved most of his companies’ operations to Texas was because of the ‘relaxed’ environmental regulation and compliant Republican political apparatus.
I agree with @hajario; this smells like Ross Perot and the Reform Party. Musk doesn’t have the political chops or attention span to pull off the successful creation of a sustained political movement of his own making, and furthermore he’s only going to be able to distinguish himself from the GOP by taking a radical realignment with progressive causes like environmentalism which will will peel off votes from Democrats because being the Also Fascist Party isn’t going to attract either MAGA nor bring out closet voters.
This assumes that political parties and elections are even going to matter in a few years, the thesis of which I am becoming increasingly doubtful.
Yes. On top of the items already listed, there’s also his unrestrained use of his private air fleet, his grossly illegal and highly polluting petroleum-burning power generators at his AI data centers, and more.
When it suits him, he holds up a domino mask of green policy like he’s a reveler at a Mardi Gras party, but he is not an environmentalist. Not at all.
There is a small chance musk is playing chess here, not checkers.
Thesis:
When trump dies, the traditional fatcat Rs, Wall Street, and corporate types, will want to take back their party from the fascist MAGA crowd.
The fascist MAGA crowd won’t like that and someplace affirmatively branded as the New Apartheid party will be very attractive to them.
In a three way battle between the center-right Dems (under any sensible Overton window that’s exactly what they are), the definitely right Repubs, and the far right Apartheid folks, the apartheid folks will be the second largest and most energized group.
Musk is obviously not their presidential candidate. At least not under our current constitution as interpreted by prior SCOTUSs. But he and his X mouthpiece and Grok AI troll can sure stage manage whoever they pick as their figurehead.
My view is that maybe, just maybe, musk is setting up this effort now, intending to build it into a functioning national-scale party bureaucracy, then pull the sheets away to reveal the true Apartheid banner when the time is right. Which will be early in the mad scramble when it’s apparent that trump is no longer a factor. Whether by death, unignorable senility, violent overthrow, etc.
I’m not asserting he will succeed at this effort. But I am asserting this is a reasonable interpretation of what he’s thinking / hoping to do. No guarantee I’m right. But I might be.
One thing Musk could do to trick people into liking him would be to open a free children’s hospital. If Danny Thomas can do it, so can he, and no doubt there would also be a buttload of tax write offs.
Call me crazy, but I think a new political party would have a better chance of success if it wasn’t started by one of the most detested people in the country.
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