But part of them being bought is them knowing you can get them into office. Any professional politician knows how difficult it will be for a new party to win even a few seats in Congress. How many will tie themselves to what is most likey going to be a failure? His money alone won’t convince them of this, and I don’t think he has the charm to bring them around as new converts.
The Bull Moose party.
There’s a big difference between bribing existing pols versus simply hiring the necessary staff to create a party and recruit some true believers to be the Apartheid party standard bearers in those few jurisdictions.
I see musk’s way forward as the latter, not the former.
But visionary geniuses don’t think in terms of starting at the state legislature level and slowly working their way up. They want results fast, so - like Perot - they dream big, and skip the necessary groundwork to build an actual political party.
Musk has the money needed to do that, but first he needs a coherent platform that can work to enlist candidates and then attract supporters.
Direct all spending to the creation of a Mars colony and The Singularity so Elon can rule over Earth and Mars as their immortal cyber god-emperor.
Nevermind…
The groundwork to build a national political party can’t just be bought; it has to be built with ‘boots on the ground’ to promote it at all levels of elections. If you are going to pitch a new brand of soda, you can’t just pay a distributor to put it on grocery store shelves next to Coke and Pepsi; you better be out there paying promoters, setting up end aisle displays, and creating an advertising campaign that distinguishes your product as something distinct and worth taking a chance on, else you are just going to be at best the RC Cola of political parties.
Stranger
“The ‘America’ Party.”
Yet if Mr. Musk were to be compelled for an off-the-top-of-his-head answer to “what is ‘America?’”…
In effect, quite possibly. But in intent, I don’t think so. Ross Perot was a naive idealist who genuinely believed that the power of business was the salvation of America. Elon Musk is a petulant child with no impulse control. The difference in their characters may well result in a different outcome.
He’s not playing checkers or chess: he’s playing Flip the Table. He lost the game, and he doesn’t know how to lose, so he’ll try to ruin it for the person who beat him.
My best hope here is that the horse tranquilizers aren’t strong enough to distract him, and that he’ll hold the grudge long enough to hurt Maga in 2026. But it’s more likely that he’ll come down from the drugs and someone will talk him down from his roaring rampage of revenge.
Another analogy occurs to me: Musk today is looking at Trump the way Trump looked at Obama at the White House Correspondents Dinner, like, “You humiliated me in public, now I’ll burn down your house and piss on the ashes.” Trump launched into that project, and Elon might be about to launch into a similar project.
Trump has something Musk doesn’t have. He has a sleazy charisma that can hold crowds and lead a cult. But Musk has something Trump doesn’t have. He has an actual fortune.
I agree with @hajario and Stranger. Perot’s Reform Party is the obvious parallel. If it hurts trumpian interests at any level, fine, but most likely it will come to naught. Also, I love Stranger’s poetically brutal takedowns of Musk !
Freedom! Liberty! Innovation! The greatest country on earth!
I mean, I’m a borderline anarchist with bone-deep cynicism about our national project, and the buzzwords trip off my tongue. It’ll be no problem for Musk to answer that question to the satisfaction of the jingoists who’d consider voting for the America Party.
The Faygo of political parties, the biggest consumers being insane clowns.
Can we agree that members of the America Party are properly called Americans Muskovites?
I predict Musk’s party will flame out before too long, but possibly not before the mid-term elections. He doesn’t have the widespread support at the local level to mount a serious effort for a new political party, and he doesn’t have the patience to let it develop, even if he’s willing to bankroll it. I can only hope that in the midterms, he’ll have peeled off enough support from the far right to turn the House, and even possibly the Senate. Right now, though, I’m having a hard time figuring out what this party’s platform will be. “We’re not MAGA but we’re just as reprehensible”? “More Money For Musk”? “Kick Donald in the Nads”? I don’t really know what else they’ll stand for.
Pretend fiscal responsibility. Musk’s primary line of critique of the Big Ugly Bill is that it’s adding too much to the national debt. I’m sure he’s more unhappy about the changes around incentives for EVs and for renewable power generation that are going to serious hurt the profitability of Tesla than he is about anything to do with the deficit, of course, but that’s not what he tweeted about.
However, that MAGA Republicans are completely not serious about fiscal responsibility is a true thing, and fiscal responsibility is also a tried and tested election campaign issue. And if Trump trade wars himself into a significant recession, that’s another issue on which Musk could campaign, and already disagrees with Trump.
I’m not sure if this would be at all successful. Current Republican politics are almost 100% about culture wars, not economic conservatism, and I’m not sure how many fiscal conservatives that don’t cotton to the culture war stuff haven’t already switched their votes to D.
Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others.
And always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom!
I think LHoD nailed it. Musk is a chaos agent. It’s hard to see how this will play out. There’s nothing stopping the American Party from endorsing Republican or Democratic Senators or Reps running for office. Or backing Tillis (R-NC) as an independent. Who knows?
Trump policies, due to their irrationality, aren’t especially friendly to any block: even the oligarchs have reason to be wary.
Congratulations to X user Bolz Deep Ben for coining the name of Musk’s new party.
Work to destroy democracy, ruin his own reputation, then start a third party? He’s doing it in the wrong order. As small as a chance a third party ever had of mattering , in part thanks to his own efforts it has a lot smaller chance of mattering now.
It’d be nicely karmic if Trump dealt with him by having him arrested as an “illegal” and deported or imprisoned.
Of course, he probably doesn’t know he’s widely detested between his burning need to be thought of as popular & cool, and living a life surrounded by yes-men.
You know, if I were an American voter, that platform would have some appeal for me.
My understanding, and I’m just a furriner looking over the fence, is that the two parties are entrenched in state law issues like ballot access,* giving them immediate electoral advantages the new parties don’t have, and that the new parties then have to overcome.
Mind you, my understanding is based on Doonesbury’s detailed analysis of the US electoral system, He’s Never Heard of You Either, so I might be a bit dated.
*Sorta like ticks.
There are a lot of disaffected republicans, they are looking for someone, anyone to express their distress over; their farm failing, their business dropping significantly, they could lose their house/business/lifestyle, etc, etc.
The ones who thought it was all going to hurt the other people. The ones who are being treated like low intelligent people by friends, family and the media.
They can’t vote Democrat, now can they? I just don’t think you should underestimate that cohort. They probably recognize that whatever he creates will be a flash in the pan, ultimately. But they can send a message to Dear Leader perhaps?