Elon Musk's America Party is less likely to take off than his rockets to Mars

The final rift between Elon Musk and Donald Trump centred on the recently adopted budget bill that will balloon the national debt by several trillions of dollars over the next decade. AFP

Elon Musk, among the world’s richest men, this week announced plans to establish a new, third “America Party” to challenge the Democrats and Republicans. He also famously wants to colonise Mars, which might ultimately be quicker and easier.

It might depend on how serious he is about the venture. Mr Musk dramatically joined the American political scene during the 2024 campaign, giving more than $280 million to now-President Donald Trump. At first, his investment seemed to pay off. He was ensconced at a new “Department of Government Efficiency” and took a sledgehammer to the federal bureaucracy.

Mr Musk was almost gleeful in chipping away at the peripheries of the federal workforce, overseeing the summary dismissal of thousands of dedicated public servants and the closing of key institutions, most notably the US Agency for International Development (the primary arm through which American humanitarian aid was delivered globally). But, despite the significant harm caused by his willy-nilly sacking spree (most recently evident in deadly flooding in Texas that could have been mitigated by forecasting and many other key administrators), he barely made a dent in federal budget expenditures.

The final rift with Mr Trump centred on the recently adopted budget bill that will balloon the national debt by several trillions of dollars over the next decade. Mr Musk cast his opposition to the measure as principled opposition to “a disgusting abomination” that would impose “debt slavery” on young Americans. But Mr Trump said his former adviser was actually upset about the removal of electric vehicle mandates and subsidies, and dropping of a 10-year ban on state-level regulation of crypto currencies.

The underlying realities notwithstanding, it’s clear that Mr Musk’s effort to translate his almost unimaginable personal wealth into political power through an alliance with Mr Trump has decisively failed. There was never going to be room for both of them at the top, and the President holds all the cards.

That’s why Mr Musk had to abandon Washington and is now resorting to the idea of leading a third party. It’s notoriously proven essentially impossible to create viable third parties in the US political system.

Elon Musk says he is launching new political party

01:21

Born in South Africa, Mr Musk is not eligible to serve as US president. This could prove a fatal blow to his ambitions, since national party political leadership and the US presidency are virtually synonymous. But, arguably, this insurmountable problem is the key to the only real reason to take Mr Musk’s new project seriously.

All previous third-party efforts have centred around presidential campaigns. The ineligible Mr Musk, however, appears to be focused on next year’s midterm elections, saying his new party will be “laser focused on [winning] 2 or 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House districts” in 2026.

That’s a lot less ambitious than capturing the presidency, or even colonising Mars. Given his virtually inexhaustible supply of campaign funding (the right-wing Supreme Court having removed virtually all practical limitations on such spending), it’s even potentially plausible – at least at first glance.

Still, the obstacles are beyond daunting. The US political system was intentionally designed by its founders to funnel the new nation’s citizens into large and uncomfortable coalitions that, the Constitution’s framers hoped, would prevent the domination of narrow self-interested factions.

James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, key figures in drafting and promoting the US Constitution, outlined this intention in essays in The Federalist Papers. In the 1950s, the French political scientist Maurice Duverger confirmed that US-style winner-take-all-single-district election processes indeed yield two-party systems. Like it or not, the American system is working exactly as intended.

In the federal system, each state and even district has its own arcane and challenging process for ballot eligibility. Much of the voting public is acculturated to siding with whoever has a D or an R, but not an A, in brackets following their names. And even if Mr Musk’s new party wins some of those seats, it would require a still-narrowly divided Congress to be effective and influential.

Tesla’s board and stockholders may not yearn for a political war between Elon Musk and Donald Trump’s Republican Party. Reuters

Democrats would initially welcome all this. Mr Musk’s techno-libertarian outlook and the history of Doge mean that not only would liberals be unlikely to be attracted to his political project, even within the present Republican landscape he would be operating quite far to the political right. Mr Trump, though, blithely observed that “third parties have always been good for me”, although not, he added, for Republicans.

Still, the impulse could well be personal and vindictive. If he’s trying to create just enough of a wedge to make the President uncomfortable, Mr Musk could succeed. Steve Bannon, Mr Trump’s blood-and-soil populist ally, no doubt spoke for many Maga faithful when he denounced “the foul, the buffoon. Elmo the Mook”, who is “not an American” but a South African.

The truth is that Mr Musk isn’t popular, and he isn’t a centrist. While his techno-libertarian faction was a significant part of the coalition that helped re-elect Mr Trump last November, it’s almost impossible to imagine this providing the basis of a viable new national party. Moreover, Tesla’s board and stockholders may not yearn for a political war with Mr Trump’s GOP.

By setting a much more modest goal than the White House, which is beyond his reach, Mr Musk may have a better chance than most third-party entrepreneurs. But he’d better hope that the America Party performs better than his AI chatbot Grok (integrated directly into X), which last week disintegrated into a tirade of anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi declarations, including dubbing itself “Mecha-Hitler”. That’s dodgy even by the highly forgiving standards of the contemporary US right.

Mr Musk reportedly hasn’t done much yet to develop any core American Party structures, but he is apparently working on its logo – with the help of Grok, no less.

Mr Trump may well be right that he has little reason to lose any sleep. And Mr Musk could still find that refashioning his enormous personal financial heft into tremendous personal political power remains an unrealised goal, perhaps more distant than his beloved Martian colonies.