Elon Musk was a game changer for the GOP in 2024, donating nearly $300 million to campaigns and likely helping the GOP hold the House when I fully expected them to lose it in 2024.
Now Musk and President Donald Trump have had a falling out over the big, beautiful bill (BBB), and Musk has decided to start a new party.
Very quietly, some GOP senators now believe that the feud could cost them big in the upcoming midterm elections.
When Trump and Musk started feuding, the tech billionaire called the president ungrateful for what he did for the party.
He stated, "Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate."
This was two alpha males in a cage, and neither of them was willing to budge, so the breakup was very predictable, but it still happened about a month earlier than I had predicted.
Regardless, I stated this was a big problem for the GOP, and that is finally sinking in to some of the power brokers in the party.
The feud between Trump and Musk was bad for the GOP, but it got far worse when Musk announced that he was starting the America Party.
Now, I am making the assumption that if Musk does get someone to the winner’s circle, that person would caucus with the GOP, so in terms of advantage, it will not hurt the Republicans.
Where it does make a difference is that if Musk’s strategy to snag one or two key seats in the Senate and a half dozen or so seats in the House comes to fruition, make no mistake about it, they will hold all the leverage.
Musk wants to win enough seats under the America Party that he holds the key swing votes for legislation. And if he does that, his small contingent would quickly grow and break the two-party system we have today.
Most of the senators in the GOP are terrified of Trump, so they are not going to put their names to these reports, and they surely will not say anything to Trump directly, but they know this feud is a big problem.
One lawmaker who was willing to put his name to his claim is Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who stated, “He’d be splitting our party. We actually have some people concerned about the deficit. Democrats don’t.”
He later added, “We better get our act together in terms of reducing spending in our party.”
Trump likes to bully members of Congress who do not support every aspect of his legislation, as he did recently with Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), but that will do nothing but drive people to Musk’s party. Third parties are always a long shot, but our country is ripe for this right now, especially on the conservative side, where we are tired of seeing the national debt climb, now over $37 trillion. If I am being honest, Musk has my attention, and I would suggest the GOP pay attention or risk allowing him to hold the hammer in Congress.