Almost everyone right of center who knows anything about politics knows it’s probably a good thing that Republicans managed to cobble together enough of a coalition to pass President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill. We need funding to implement Trump’s agenda and, like it or not, the only way to obtain that funding without having to beat a Senate filibuster was to use the admittedly cumbersome budget reconciliation process. In the end, we got a bill with crucial financing, but also lots of awful things we didn’t want thanks to the need to compromise with too many Republican squishes. It wasn’t pretty, but it was necessary, and despite my reservations I’m glad it passed.
Sure, there was principled opposition from Republican deficit hawks like Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, but in their defense I believe they were looking to make the bill better, not politically torch the Republican Party for not agreeing with them.
Billionaire and former DOGE head Elon Musk, on the other hand, is on a whole other spectrum. And it’s becoming increasingly clear that while he may know everything about rockets, electric cars, and running successful businesses, he knows absolutely nothing about politics. Now, the man who doesn’t seem to understand even the most rudimentary aspects of how a closely divided government gets things done wants to upend the entire American two-party system by creating a third major political party.
Following an online X poll conducted on July 4th in which over 1.2 people responded with more than 65% in favor, Musk announced the formation of the America Party, stating, “By a factor of 2 to 1, you want a new political party and you shall have it! When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy. Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.”
In other words, having not gotten what he wanted, Musk isn’t just taking his ball and going home, he’s trying to torch the entire field. Despite the weird Festivus vibes of his statement, it’s a threat to be taken seriously. A third party that draws even a few percentage points from Republicans would likely devastate the party’s chances in the 2026 midterms and beyond.
Will it be as bad as all that? So far, Musk seems to at least want to limit the damage, suggesting on X that the party’s strategy for now would “laser-focus on just 2 or 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House districts” in order to influence key legislative votes. He believes it would be effective because of the “razor-thin legislative margins” in Congress. Musk wants to use this targeted approach to make the America Party, which would caucus independently and talk to both major parties on legislation, “the deciding vote on contentious laws, ensuring they serve the true will of the people.”
Still, even injecting a third party into a few competitive Senate and House races seems like it would hurt Republicans more than Democrats. Indeed, Republicans have been the ones hurt more recently, especially since conservatives and libertarian types, perhaps because of our individualist mindset, seem to be more prone to creating third parties these days. For some reason, far too many of our people love tilting at windmills.
There is one way, however, that Musk’s America Party, or any other sizable third (or fourth or fifth) right of center political party, could work to make America better without helping the Democrats, and that is with a nationwide Ranked-Choice Voting system (RCV). Now I’ve written about RCV before and every time I write or post about it I get plenty of hate from commenters who think the debate is over by screaming ‘remember [the] Maine!’ (or something) and ‘but muh Alaska!’
Fine, it hurts us to some extent in those places and political climates, but if a voting system helped only one party all the time it would never be accepted. But, because most third parties and spoiler candidates are conservative leaning, I do think it would help Republicans more than Democrats over the long haul, and because of that I do think critics should reconsider.
After all, would you trade a couple of Republican squishes in Maine and Alaska for Senators Eric Hovde of Wisconsin and Mike Rogers of Michigan instead of the two Democrats who got there because of spoilers? And imagine the disasters under Biden that could have been mitigated if both Georgia seats had remained in Republican hands. For starters, would we have a Ketanji Brown Jackson on the bench?
The beauty of RCV is that it empowers voters to express their full sentiment about every candidate on the ballot. As I wrote in my previous column on the subject: When there are more than two candidates in a race, voters are granted the power to rank them in order. If a candidate wins 50% of first choices, that’s it, just like in any other election. But if no one reaches 50%, the last-place candidate is eliminated, and those voters have their vote count for their second choice.
Admittedly, this is more than a ‘tweak,’ and it’ll be a tough sell to people predisposed to be against it. However, if we are indeed in an era where a center-right third party is going to make waves, a switch to RCV might be the only way to mitigate the damage.