I take Elon Musk at his word when he says he wants to start a third party to secure things we both want to see effectuated. The difference is that, while I effectively do little to support this — casting my vote and donating small amounts to candidates I support — he seems willing to do even less than that by sabotaging the same agenda items we both hold dear because he thinks he can apply market disruption to glacial republican democracy.
As you’ve probably heard by now, Musk — having been galled over the fact that President Donald Trump and the GOP’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” is too big to be beautiful — is on the cusp of starting his own party, which he calls the America Party.
By a factor of 2 to 1, you want a new political party and you shall have it!
When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy.
Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom. https://t.co/9K8AD04QQN
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 5, 2025
Let’s here note that we don’t live in a one-party system or a democracy, but a republic, nor has the America Party officially been founded yet. Ordinarily, these might seem like pedantic concerns, but we’ll get to why this is kind of important in a bit.
Coming out of the Independence Day weekend, Musk spent a lot of time going back and forth with influencers on X, especially in both the crypto and gun rights spheres.
For instance, here’s Musk saying “The Second Amendment is sacred” to a user who later in the thread posted an old video of Musk shooting a .50 caliber weapon:
The Second Amendment is sacred
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 6, 2025
Do you think the majority of the MAGA base will remain loyal to the president?
The American party I’m looking for
= This + Somehttps://t.co/cJzVmDfliO
— Reseth (@ResethO) July 7, 2025
And here’s Musk, responding affirmatively to someone who asked if the platform of the new party would be “reduce debt, responsible spending only,” “modernize military with ai/robotics,” “pro tech, accelerate to win in ai,” “less regulation across board but especially in energy,” “free speech,” “pro natalist,” and “centrist policies everywhere else.”
“Yeah!” Musk responded.
Yeah!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 5, 2025
He also was asked if the party would embrace Bitcoin. “Fiat is hopeless, so yes,” he responded.
Fiat is hopeless, so yes
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 7, 2025
Musk is apparently a subscriber to “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” theory of democracy, where — in a famous parable told in one of the books in the late Douglas Adams’ sci-fi series — the inhabitants of one planet elect evil alien lizards they all hate, yet refuse to get rid of because “if they don’t vote for a lizard … the wrong lizard might get in.”
This is great stuff if you believe the whole political party system can be boiled down to a Coke v. Pepsi debate and want a different choice of drink. Parties, by increasingly demanding unswerving fealty to a general set of rigid policy priorities, have done little to disabuse voters of this analogy in the 21st century.
Then again, it’s worth noting at least two things that militate against this interpretation. First, while both parties have instituted increasingly strident purity tests, they’ve also drifted further apart from each other — and still manage to embrace most of the political spectrum in this country in one way or another. Second, it’s worth noting that most of the party elites in one party have been basically overthrown by the dogged campaigns of one very rich celebrity real estate mogul who was willing to put it all on the line to disrupt that party and its leadership. The Democrats remain, meanwhile, in the capture of their radical elites.
Furthermore, while Musk has promised fantastic things to campaign on thus far, the Republicans have been campaigning on them since the Reagan Revolution at least. The question is how Musk plans to deliver, or whether his third-party gambit will just make these problems worse.
Promising to be more of a Second Amendment originalist party than the current GOP likely won’t do the trick. The GOP, while not perfect, has been good enough on this matter that most Americans can exercise their constitutional rights in part in all states and to a more substantial extent in red states. Without decapitating the entire party apparatus in a one-swoop coup de grâce, all voting for Musk’s party might mean that you’re checking the box for a dude who posts videos of him firing a .50 caliber firearm while essentially casting your lot with a Democratic Party that, if it gets its way, will let you have a colonial-era pea-shooter — at most.
Controlling spending, similarly, is fantastic until you actually have to do it with a minority party in power. Again, consider the fact that what led to the break is the “Big Beautiful Bill,” a bill that was only beautiful by comparison to other bills passed under the budget reconciliation process.
But those last three words are entirely the point: There is no other bill that would have been passed under that process, and unless Musk offers us a radical version of legislating which bypasses it while funding our government and his agenda items, he’s basically talking about starting a third party that would take votes away from the Republicans and give the country over to the people who didn’t think that bill was beautiful not because it was too big, but because it wasn’t gargantuan enough for their liking.
This goes ad nauseam. Musk says wonderful stuff — indeed, what we’re all thinking — but unless he has revolutionary solutions we all haven’t thought of yet, what he’s basically promising to do is to go Republican but harder. To go Republican to 11, to use another analogy from a satirical work I’m equally fond of. Which is fantastic, except — aside from a necessary reconciliation funding measure — that’s more or less what the current administration has been doing. He has no candidates signed up, no platform aside from a “yeah!” to every gun-rights aficionado and crypto influencer who asks (and they might be individuals in sympathy with me on most things, but that’s hardly the point), and no way to fund the leviathan effort that would be needed aside from cashing in his own not-inconsiderable chips.
Musk may be a genius in many fields. I do not believe he’s managed to outsmart the political world so completely after just a few years of involvement in it, especially since he doesn’t even get the details about our intentionally slow-moving republican practices right — and his failure means, at best, significant Democrat gains in the midterms and beyond. At worst, what it will spell is the death of the things that both of us earnestly hold to be good policy decisions, delivering the country into the maw of people who don’t like guns or fiscal continence, or even America.
The stakes are too high and the effort is too disorganized to succeed in its current form to recommend to anyone, much less to people who think this is going to be the future of the conservative movement. And yet, the very idea may be so appealing that Trump and other Republicans need to nip this in the bud, and quick. The best way they can assure Americans that we aren’t in a one-party system is to behave like we aren’t going forward, proving that the largesse of the “Big Beautiful Bill” was an aberration dictated by the process, not how they’re going to govern.
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