Elon's American Party

Bad Idea? Or Good Idea?

People think in binary ways. Especially if they want to create drama. It’s all or nothing. That’s been the discourse on Elon’s idea of the American Party.

A third party is going to most probably fail in the US at this point. In our history, third parties have always failed. In most cases, they are splintered off of the Republican Party, and they wind up getting the candidate elected who is an anathema to the values the third party represents.

You can look at race after race in the last election cycle where it was razor thin. In a case where the Democrat beat the Republican, often it is the Libertarian candidate taking votes that most probably would go to a Republican who is the spoiler. In other races, a Green Party candidate elects a Republican when a Democrat would have won.

Bill Ayers took the long view. He fundamentally transformed the Democratic Party from within, and that led to the election of Barack Obama and the far, far, far left-wing cabinet of Joe Biden. Joe couldn’t name all of his cabinet members.

Given the proclivities of mayors in the largest American cities, it is not a stretch to say the core identity of Democrats today is Marxist adjacent, but very big government and centralized government program solutions to problems friendly.

To say Democrats are a far left party, not just left of center, is accurate.

Trump is remaking the Republican Party. The old establishment is being diminished. But, the Republican coalition is a lot different than the Democrats. It’s got several facets to it because it doesn’t favor centralized solutions to problems. It has competing interests. There are Republicans who favor foreign intervention with our military to solve problems. But, there are many newer Republicans who do not favor that approach, yet they still want a strong military. This is but one example.

The other thing to note about the Republican Party is that state leaders are rarely very strong. I can cite a few examples. California, Illinois, and New York do not have strong state leadership that vets candidates, supports them, raises money for them and gets stuff done. Otherwise, they’d be better Republican states. My new home state of Nevada has a feckless Republican leader who is all about himself, and not about the party. It shows.

In states that are truly “red states”, generally it is the governor who is a strong leader, and there are enough residents who have been persuaded to their core principled point of view. Florida and Texas are states like that,t but there are others. It’s also worth noting that the “Republicanism” you see in Florida isn’t necessarily the same as the one you see in Indiana or Montana.

The Republican Party is in the midst of abandoning the old corporate establishment class and remaking itself.

That’s why the time is right for a person like Elon to strike.

However, a true outlying third party is not the way. Too expensive. Too arduous given ballot restrictions and other artificial political roadblocks put up by both parties to stop competition.

There is another way, though. Elon could run candidates in races that have a high probability of success by conferring an “American Party” moniker on a Republican candidate. That would allow the candidate to run in the Republican primary. It would also give that candidate air cover to buck the party line when votes happen that normally a Republican would have to fall in line to vote on in order to keep party support and discipline.

For Republicans, the American Party people would be a pain in the ass, similar to what RINOs are now. Except, they would have a different agenda and vision than the RINO. Their core mission would be to end spending, shrink government, and decentralize it. At least, that is the vibe I am getting from Elon.

I thought this piece in American Greatness summed up the Silicon Valley ethos pretty well as it pertains to how startup CEO’s like Elon view the world.

Thus, I consider myself an expert on the mentality of the average Silicon Valley boss, and I can say this with certainty—people with that background tend to routinely and almost exclusively engage in binary thinking: 1/0, yes/no, true/false.

They are used to using math or engineering to solve a problem, and that means there is an answer. There can be some statistical variability around that answer, but the variance is hyper-small.

The other thing about a CEO is that they make a decision, and there is a chain reaction inside the company to make it a reality; otherwise, there are consequences. In government, that is NOT the case. Even a President can make a decision on an issue, and it takes a great amount of time to work through it. I once had a conversation with a Congressional staffer. He told me that he doesn’t see the results of a decision for years.

Elon got a close-up view of how the sausage is made in the factory, and he didn’t like it. Because Trump is who he is, he can’t sit still and be quiet and has to pick a battle to fight using words that are sharp and derogatory.

The American Greatness article accurately says:

Musk instead seeks the immediate, perfect answer: spending cuts in the current year that will eradicate the debt and the deficit. Mathematically this seems possible, and such mathematics appeal to the engineer in him, but he fails to understand that politically such an instant solution is utterly impossible and will accomplish nothing other than to turn America over to Democrats who care not even a little bit about the national debt and instead see that onerous debt as an essential component in achieving the America-destroying Cloward-Piven Strategy that will one day put the likes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez into high office.

If you are one of those opponents of the “uniparty” who see Musk’s third-party efforts as supporting your longing for fundamental change, consider that his central issue of minimizing the debt will serve only to draw away GOP voters. Democrat voters care almost exclusively about entitlement spending, and a reduction in the national debt is anathema to this ideal. The America Party will serve only to draw away MAGA voters from the GOP and will provide Democrats with the marginal advantage they need to rule America’s downfall into a neo-Marxist hellhole.

This is why my idea of infiltrating the existing Republican Party is a good one. Elon’s ideas aren’t anathema to traditional Republicans. The problem is they pay lip service to those ideas, and nothing gets done because of the crosscurrents and riptides of forces inside the Republican Party.

Running candidates with the American Party moniker inside a host that already has some favorable momentum to the ideas you espouse is far more efficient and better than starting from scratch.

I hope that is the way Elon is starting to think.