Elon Musk’s enthusiastic dive into politics has taken some new turns recently. Musk has pledged to unseat Republicans who voted for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in primary challenges. He is also set to start a new, centrist “America Party.” Republicans ought to worry more about the latter concern than the former but should not be particularly scared about either.
Musk will learn how hard it is to defeat incumbent members of Congress should he go through with his primary pledge. Only four incumbents lost primaries in 2024: two members of the so-called “Squad” who lost to less extreme progressive Democrats, and two Republicans. One was a victim of redistricting, which placed him in the same seat as another incumbent, while the other, Rep. Bob Good of Virginia, lost to a Trump-backed state senator. In short, all four were punished for being out of step with party elites or the mainstream of their party.
Trump’s power within the GOP is especially important in primaries. Only six Republicans lost primaries in 2022 who did not face another incumbent because of redistricting. Four had voted to impeach Trump after Jan. 6, 2021, one (Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina) was an impetuous 26-year-old who was considered too immature, and the last (Mississippi’s Steven Palazzo) had simply lost touch with his district. None lost because of fiscal apostasy, and none lost when Trump supported them.
It’s also been clear for years that Republican primary voters prefer candidates who deliver tax cuts to those who cut spending. The watershed election in this regard was the 1996 GOP presidential primary. Then-Texas Sen. Phil Gramm was regarded as the most serious conservative challenger to front-runner Kansas Sen. Bob Dole, but he was out of the race after Iowa. He lost an early race in Louisiana to social conservative Pat Buchanan and then was outclassed by businessman Steve Forbes.
Forbes ran on the now-standard conservative platform of tax cuts and vouchers while Gramm, a longtime deficit hawk, was best known for a series of spending cut bills he co-authored in the 1980s. The remainder of the decade saw tax-cut advocacy groups such as Americans for Tax Reform and the Club for Growth become the preeminent players on the Right. Cutting spending, a conservative staple from the Goldwater days, has slowly faded into the background.
Incumbents facing a Musk-supported challenge will also be able to claim they want to cut spending. Most, if not all, will have voted for the DOGE rescission bill that the administration has sent to the Hill, and all will likely have some spending cut plan or series of votes they have cast to tout. They didn’t get to where they are by being stupid; they know how to shift and weave to maximize their appeal. With Trump’s backing, it will be nearly impossible for Musk to make the case that the incumbent is an anti-GOP RINO who deserves the boot.
Musk is obviously a very smart man, so it might be that his new America Party is a sign he is shifting course from the primaries to the general election to advance his anti-spending cause. But even that view comes up short upon closer examination.
It’s true that polls show more Americans say they are independents than ever before, a finding backed up by recent voter registration statistics that show independent or nonpartisan registrations surging. But being unhappy with the two major parties in the abstract does not mean those voters will flock en masse to a concrete alternative.
The fact is that most independent voters lean heavily toward one of the two major parties. Surveys that ask independents if they lean in one direction show a very small number of self-professed “true” independents, usually between 2% and 10% of the total electorate. Polls also show that those who lean toward a party tend to vote like full-fledged partisans. The “real” support for a third party is thus much smaller than appears on the surface.
It’s no wonder, then, that genuine independent or third-party candidates rarely win House or Senate races. Sens. Angus King (I-ME) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) are nominally independent but are known as de facto Democrats. Prior to their elections, the last independent to win a congressional race was Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman in 2006. He won despite losing his party primary because Republicans deserted their nominee to back him over the more progressive Ned Lamont. Musk’s party is very unlikely to benefit from similar circumstances.
The last person to win as a third-party nominee was James Buckley. Brother of the famous conservative writer and intellectual William F. Buckley Jr., Jim ran for New York’s Senate seat on the conservative party line against a Democrat and a liberal appointed Republican incumbent, Charles Goodell. Running as the only conservative against two liberals, Buckley won with 39%. Given the partisan polarization that has arisen since, no America Party candidate will likely have such a clear ideological lane to fill.
TWO REASONS THE US AND IRAN LOOK SET TO FIGHT AGAIN
This means that Musk’s candidates will, at best, be spoilers, potentially winning large enough shares of the vote to defeat a targeted Republican. But it could be that Musk’s effort hurts Democratic challengers more than Republican incumbents. Voters who backed Trump and Republicans as the lesser of two evils in 2024 might be tempted to back an America Party candidate in 2026. Those are voters Democrats need on their team to take back both houses. Musk’s intervention, then, could save the very people he seeks to punish.
Elon Musk is a brilliant entrepreneur, but politics is not business. He discovered that in this year’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race, when his millions of dollars barely made a dent as the Democratic-backed candidate won big. Don’t be surprised if he figures this out well before next November and decides that discretion is the better part of valor.