Vote Martian?

Elon Musk has broached the idea of a third party? Good idea or potential disaster?

The Bromance is over; Elon Musk and Donald Trump are duking it out on social media over the Big Beautiful Bill. And it’s full on ugly, complete with threats of contract cancellations and calls for impeachment.

Frankly, it’s surprising that they put up with each other as long as they did. The Donald is dapper and demands deference. Elon is a Silicon Valley slob, complete with the informal manners of the area. Trump is leading a coalition of rednecks and the remaining Reaganoids. Musk is a Silicon Valley left-libertarian. The Republican Party is the party of oil and global warming denial. Elon Musk launched the world’s most successful electric car company.

That they worked together at all is testament to how batshit crazy and evil the Democratic Party has become. The friendship was an Enemy of My Enemy relationship. Thank you Elon and Donald for working together as long as you did. Elon, you can now sail over the sunrise. Off to Mars with you!

Or maybe not. Elon isn’t done yet. He has a pinned tweet of a poll asking his X following if it is time to start a new centrist political party. Mr. Musk often polls before he acts, so I take this tweet seriously. This is scary. If a new political party splits the sane vote, the Demoncrats could gain a supermajority in Congress and end America once and for all.

Then again, a new political party operated correctly might be necessary to save this country from bankruptcy. When it comes to balancing the budget, Trump isn’t winning. Not only is he personally addicted to debt, his coalition includes aging children who think we are still on the right side of the Laffer Curve

along with self-absorbed country clubbers who are willing to mortgage the country to get their tax cuts.

Still better than genocidal internazis, but not good enough. But is a third party the solution? The default setting for third party candidates is to steal votes from whichever party it most resembles, putting the worst of the legacy two evils in power. However, with the right marketing position and strategy, a third party can defy Duverger’s Law and make things better. In order to show how Elon Musk could choose between being petulantly destructive or heroically successful, I’m going to steal heavily from the manual for starting a successful third party in the US. I’ve quaffed beers with the author multiple times back in the day, so I don’t think he’ll mind my copying some examples and figures too much.

What is a Centrist?

Elon wrote about starting a party which appeals to 80% of Americans. So he’s going closer to the political center – which up to a point is a good thing. Extreme parties like the Libertarian Party go nowhere in our district based first past the post election system. But trying to get too close to the center also has problems. Just what is the center, anyway? Let’s examine a half dozen issues where there is a clear difference between the legacy parties: immigration, DEI, abortion, taxes, welfare, and global warming. The Republican position is currently:

• Anti immigration

• Abolish DEI

• Pro Life

• Tax cuts for the rich

• Cut welfare for the poor

• Laugh at global warming

The Democrat position is currently:

• Replace America

• Abolish Whiteness

• Pro abortion and maybe even legalize infanticide

• Tax increases on the rich

• Welfare for everyone

• Freak out about global warming

So what is the centrist position? Is it:

• Anti immigration

• Anti DEI

• Pro Life

• Tax the rich

• Take care of the poor

• Do something about global warming?

Or is it:

• Open borders

• Hate Whitey

• Pro abortion

• Cut taxes

• Cut welfare

• Laugh at global warming?

It is possible to have two politicians who are halfway between the Republican and Democrats but have nothing in common with each other! A centrist party can thus be more divisive than a party with principles. Recall the history of the Reform Party.

Another possible definition of Centrist would be to split the difference on all issues. Form the Beige Party!

Under ordinary conditions, an across-the-board centrist party would simply be voting for the status quo. Not very interesting. Voters could achieve that by simply keeping the mix between Republicans and Democrats roughly equal. But these are not ordinary times! Thanks to seniority and computerized gerrymandering the legacy parties have grown so far apart that we are getting whipsawn back and forth. A damper might have some appeal.

The Petulant Hegelian Option

With the Democrats full on loony, and the Republican margin thin, the Republican Congress can only be as conservative as its least conservative representatives. It’s tempting to replace those least conservative representatives with something better. Doing this with a third party is a dangerous game. Run someone who is more conservative in the general election and you split the conservative vote and likely replace the RINO with a Democrat. Goodbye leadership positions.

But suppose the Martian Party were to emphasize fiscal sanity but otherwise take centrist or even liberal positions. On a Left-Right scale, the Martian Party could be the moderates that Elon envisions. Let’s look at a district where the voters are moderate on a Left-Right basis but are fiscally saner than congress. We’ll use a fiscal wisdom spectrum in place of the traditional Left-Right spectrum to get:

The Martian Party candidate wins, and all is well.

But this is giving the voters an awful lot of credit. What happens in districts where the median voter is nearly as infantile as Congress?

The Martian Party helps elect Democrats, and not the good kind. Do that enough and the US gets to go the route of yesteryear’s Argentina. Argentina did manage to eventually elect a libertarian, but look at the hell they went through to get there.

Return to Your Roots, Elon

The better option for a new political party is to replace defective Democrats. The Democratic Party has been indulging in No Enemies to My Left for so long that it is fielding candidates that are far to the left of all but the Bluest districts. They can do this because in Blue districts Republicans are about as electable as Libertarians. Those districts need a viable opposition party.

Once upon a time, Elon Musk was just the man to launch such a party. He was the darling of the Left. He was saving the planet by making electric cars that worked. He’s smart. The I Love Fucking Science redditards love associating themselves with someone who is smart. And a techno-smarty is just the person to tell the country to do the math. We need spending cuts and tax increases. (Either that, or we need to legalize Fentanyl for the residents in Medicaid funded old folks homes.)

But can he do it after angering the Left with his bromance with Trump?

Maybe. Here’s a possible narrative:

“The Democratic Party is no longer liberal. A true liberal believes in free speech, democracy, and the rule of law. The Democratic Party has gone the route of censorship, insecure elections, and weaponizing the secret police. Donald Trump may be a fascist douchebag, but he loves America, and today’s Democratic Party leadership doesn’t.

“The Democratic Party is no longer the party of the working class. Gigantic federal deficits are subsidies for those who have money to invest. Over regulation is moving jobs overseas, Open borders are driving wages down to third world levels.

“And the Democratic Party is bad for the planet as well. Letting looters run rampant is destroying our core cities and encouraging suburban sprawl. Making it hard to do business here in the US moves industry to countries with weak environmental regulations. Weakening America will make China the world’s dominant superpower, and the Chinese government is not eco-friendly.

“So I tried working with the Republicans, since they were the lesser of two evils. But they are still evil. They give tax cuts to the rich while selling the country to the oil sheiks to finance the resulting deficits. They deny global warming and expect our oil reserves to last forever. They are mortgaging our future for today’s appearance of economic growth.

“Maybe it’s time for something better than the lesser of two evils. It’s time for a party run by people who can do the math and who care about our children’s future. To that end, I announce a new party, the Martian Party.”

Martian Party may not be the optimal name. Maybe it should be Eco Party or Conservation Party. To be more competitive than the Republicans in Blue districts requires disagreeing loudly with the Republicans on some vote-driving issues while still working with the principled Republicans on borders and budgets. The global warming issue is an obvious choice for Elon. It’s his original brand. He can sell a lot more Teslas founding an economically sane eco party than he can by teaming up with the Drill Baby Drill party.

The global warming issue plays well in college towns and tech areas. And as I have written before, except for the global warming issue, the Democrats have gone Brown:

The Martian Party can still work with Team R on tariffs and immigration. As I have pointed out before, the greenies who inhabit the coffee shops and food coops are Trumpier than Trump on trade. “Buy local!” Also, if it’s Made in USA, repair man labor is no longer astronomically expensive compared to the labor that built the product in the first place. Repair instead of replace become economically viable. As for immigration, Ecotopia and open borders do not mix.

Balancing the budget also ties in to an environmental theme. Perpetual deficits require perpetual population and economic growth. This is not good for the planet.

So the Martian Party can openly work with DOGE and the grownup Republicans and can work with the Democrats for the required revenue enhancements. It can work with Trump on revenue enhancements as well, since the rich and big corporations can easily dodge higher taxes if tariffs are low. And labor based taxation causes the government to tax itself:

So, Elon, I enthusiastically invite you to return to your roots, sell more Teslas, and call Donald Trump an arrogant poopy head. Launch that third party, but be sure to read the manual first. Properly divided we stand. Two feet are better than one.