It’s no wonder President Trump last summer laughed off entrepreneur Elon Musk’s attempt to start a new third political party as revenge for Trump persisting in pushing his “big, beautiful bill,” which promises to increase the national debt by at least $3 trillion.
Since the Progressive (Bull Moose) party was founded by ex-President Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 after William Howard Taft snatched that year’s Republican presidential nomination away from him, six other “third” parties have started up, none enjoying much success.
There were the Dixiecrats in 1948, founded by South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond, managing to carry four states and 39 electoral votes before disappearing.
The American Independence Party of George Wallace did a little better in 1968, carrying five states and 46 electoral votes before disbanding nationally, even though a California affiliate remains as a minor party.
Businessman Ross Perot’s Reform Party won 19 percent of the popular vote in 1992, but took no electoral votes and gradually died out over the next few years.
The Green, Constitution and Forward parties have since done little better.
But Musk polled on his X (formerly Twitter) social media service and among 5.6 million supposed voters, reported there was 80.4 percent support for a new party.
Yet, political parties founded on revenge generally don’t do well, as the Bull Moose, Thurmond and Wallace efforts demonstrate. Make no mistake, Musk’s putative America Party bid (he’s still allegedly considering it) is based on revenge. Not only for his lost best-buddy status with Trump, but also because Trump’s bill eliminated virtually all federal tax credits for buyers of both new and used electric vehicles. Without those subsidies, no one knows how low sales of EVs like Musk’s Teslas might eventually drop.
Musk was very open about his threat to start a new party if Trump’s signature bill passed. “If this insane spending bill passes, the American Party will be formed the next day,” the California entrepreneur fulminated. Didn’t happen.
Despite its name, Musk didn’t envision a sweeping national party to begin with. Rather, he said it would focus at first on two or three Senate seats and eight to 10 congressional districts, out of the 35 that Democrats now say they will concentrate on next year. The idea would be to create a new force in Congress that could control the balance of power there for at least two years.
If Musk really plans to spend a substantial part of his billions of dollars on this political project, he might as well just light a match to the money, for all the headway it’s likely to make.
Even Perot’s Reform Party, with its almost 20 percent share of national votes, never came close to electing a senator or representative.
Musk argues the U.S. government has become a “uniparty” controlled by Democrats and Republicans he says are complicit in unfettered spending and virtually unlimited, constantly rising debt ceilings.
So far, the Musk effort looks rather inept. Experts say many early America Party filings submitted to the Federal Elections Commission appeared inauthentic, and Musk even admitted one filing in New York was fake.
Nor has Musk set a budget, although some analysts say the effort he outlined could cost $1 billion and take about 10 years to organize effectively.
That would be about four times what Musk spent in his well-documented and successful 2024 effort to target swing states which figured to have narrow election outcomes in order to assure Trump’s election.
But funding the America Party would be very different from kicking hundreds of millions into a Trump campaign, as Musk did last year. His effort won Trump’s gratitude and a license for Musk to make job cuts throughout the federal government while gaining access to previously confidential information.
But then Musk began to differ with Trump on a few issues and their friendship cooled, as Musk’s loyalty to Trump was no longer absolute.
Meanwhile, Musk has no formal party structure, no platform and no realistic candidates for any of the yet-unnamed seats he covets.
All of which means it is rapidly becoming too late for Musk’s latest effort to accomplish much, no matter how much he might invest in it.
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com, and read more of his columns online at californiafocus.net.
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