Tesla Stock Slides After Musk Says He's Creating a New Political Party
wsj.com
wsj.com
Bissent told CNN that Elon completed his DOGE thing and was now needed by the shareholders of his many companies. Bissent was succinct and polite. Whomever posted the CNN video snippet said that maybe now we know who gave Elon a black eye that day.
EDIT: I just read your .is linky to article. Glad they quoted Bissent.
A Musk party will draw votes from Republicans and shift things in favor of the Democrats which is good for Democrats on some level but bad because they need to reform themselves, not live life on "easy mode".
Musk's complaint seems to be that he gave a lot of money to Trump's campaign but didn't get to write the budget, so I think he'll feel betrayed if he elects candidates who don't follow his orders -- and they won't. American political parties aren't like the Communist Party (which chooses you and can kick you out), they don't have any way to discipline elected officials who don't toe the line.
Sure they do - you can be removed from committees or projects, you can get primaried, you can lose funding from the RNC/DNC, etc.
We aren’t quite at the level of China disappearing folks or deciding to put them under house arrest but there are repercussions.
The party doesn't control that. This can just as well work against the party leadership.
> you can lose funding from the RNC/DNC
Party funds are often less significant than both candidate raised and outside funding, so while that's true, its not a particularly strong sanction.
> We aren’t quite at the level of China disappearing folks or deciding to put them under house arrest but there are repercussions.
We're not even at the "average liberal democracy party system" level of party discipline, more relevantly.
Well they don't literally control the votes, but folks by and large vote for who the party supports. The scenario is closer to something like you ran for office with the party's support and got elected. Then it's election time and now the party goes and gives money to someone else, helps them fundraise, gets them in touch with your previous donors (now no longer your donors), and now your election went from a pretty easy shoe-in to an all-out fight for you to secure your job against the entire party apparatus. Whereas if you toe the line, none of that has to happen.
So in short, yes the parties can and do find various ways to discipline those who don't fall in line. This is something that is obviously* true.
> Party funds are often less significant than both candidate raised and outside funding, so while that's true, its not a particularly strong sanction.
* Here it is important to understand where campaign funds come from. It's not about the money coming from party funds, it's the connections the party has to help you the candidate acquire additional funds from donors and donor organizations, introductions, etc.
Nor do they control whether someone does or does not file for election as a primary candidate against you, nor do they control whether a primary challenger is able to mobilize the parties usual voters.
> but folks by and large vote for who the party supports.
If by "who the party supports" you mean "either the incumbent, if there is one, in the primary or whoever wins the primary in the general", you are correct, but that...doesn't address the issue.
If you mean, "who the party leadership supports, irrespective of incumbency and other factors, in the primary", that's not really strongly the case in normal party primaries. (It's kind of true in Republican primaries in the era of Trump, but that's a result of a powerful outside-of-leadership activist movement taking over the party leadership that was strong enough to defeat the leadership's candidates in primaries taking over the party leadership, but that's...not an easily replicable condition, and the only reason it could happen is because party leadership doesn't control who gets primaried, at all or who successfully.)
> they don't have any way to discipline elected officials who don't toe the line.
Me:
> Sure they do
There isn't any debating this. You can see these things play out for yourself. Senator Tillis is a recent example.
My understanding is that since the Tea Party, Republican house members haven't lasted as long as house members usually have because they either decide the juice isn't worth the squeeze or get primary challengers.
Bigger picture, Tillis resigning is bad news for the Republicans in the sense that, in the current climate, he's likely to be replaced by an extremist just when people are going to be sick and tired of the consequences of Republican rule (e.g. just as people were sick and tired of Democratic rule not long ago.) No party has the Democrat's ability to pull defeat from the jaws of victory but if they can put up somebody who doesn't use words like misogynoir and latinx against somebody far to the right of Tillis the outcome will be predictable.
One form of "party discipline" I noticed in 2016 was that primary candidates from the presidency made the tour of right-wing donor organizations that would make them kiss the ring and run the gauntlet, testifying that they pass a long list of "litmus tests" that I think weren't all that popular with voters, even conservative voters. Trump stood out because he was the exception, and in particularly he brought up the immigration issue which was otherwise suppressed by the system. My interpretation though was that the Republican Right was funding a large number of "no hope" candidates and there was some combination of "these organizations win by getting a lot of coverage for conservative ideas in the media" and "these candidates get a lot of money they can spend to hire their friends to work on their campaigns"
Unless that is absolutely forbidden by US election law, Musk's new party may in fact have a way to do that. He gets to write the rules. He's also (at least initially) the one who supplies the money, so he could presumably choose to not fund the campaign of any candidate that he decided he didn't like.
The weak state of US party discipline is largely a mix of direct consequences of the combination of federal and state electionand campaign finance law, from the broad shape of the electoral system to the specific ways in which elections and campaign finance work, and indirect consequences of the same law (e.g., what is advantageous to actually winning seats giving the direct consequences of the law.)
Here are some things from the 2008 Republican Party Platform [1] that illustrate what Republicans used to be for that Trump has completely reversed the current party on:
• They wanted to address climate change.
> By increasing our American energy supply and decreasing the long term demand for oil, we will be well positioned to address the challenge of climate change and continue our longstanding responsibility for stewardship over the environment.
...
> As part of a global climate change strategy, Republicans support technology-driven, market-based solutions that will decrease emissions, reduce excess greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, increase energy efficiency, mitigate the impact of climate change where it occurs, and maximize any ancillary benefits climate change might offer for the economy.
...
> Because Republicans believe that solutions to the risk of global climate change will be found in the ingenuity of the American people, we propose a Climate Prize for scientists who solve the challenges of climate change. Honoraria of many millions of dollars would be a small price for technological developments that eliminate our need for gas-powered cars or abate atmospheric carbon.
• They wanted to encourage clean energy.
> Alternate power sources must enter the mainstream. The technology behind solar energy has improved significantly in recent years, and the commercial development of wind power promises major benefits both in costs and in environmental protection. Republicans support these and other alternative energy sources, including geothermal and hydropower, and anticipate technological developments that will increase their economic viability. We therefore advocate a long-term energy tax credit equally applicable to all renewable power sources.
• They wanted to reduce demand for fossil fuels.
> Conservation does not mean deprivation; it means efficiency and achieving more with less. Most Americans today endeavor to conserve fossil fuels, whether in their cars or in their home heating, but we can do better. We can construct better and smarter buildings, use smarter thermostats and transmission grids, increase recycling, and make energy-efficient consumer purchases. Wireless communications, for example, can increase telecommuting options and cut back on business travel. The Republican goal is to ensure that Americans have more conservation options that will enable them to make the best choices for their families.
...
> We must also produce more vehicles that operate on electricity and natural gas, both to reduce demand for oil and to cut CO2 emissions.
> Given that fully 97 percent of our current transportation vehicles rely on oil, we will aggressively support technological advances to reduce our petroleum dependence. For example, lightweight composites could halve the weight and double the gas mileage of cars and trucks, and together with flex-fuel and electric vehicles, could usher in a renaissance in the American auto industry.
[1] https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/2008-republican-pa...
The Republicans came roaring back in 2010, in large part because they abandoned the positions you outlined. Those simply aren't positions Republicans hold.
Those are much closer to Democratic positions. If those are his goals, it might work better to stage a takeover of the Democratic party. Although Republicans run successfully against the most progressive elements of the Democratic party, they're actually not very influential. (That is, in large part, why they lose -- they can't keep their own progressive wing, who considers the party leadership right wing.)
Or at least, somebody other than Musk could try it. He's an extremely unreliable partner and it would be extremely difficult to convince Democrats that he's on their side.