I Opine: Elon Musk and the Bull Moose Party

With the passage of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” Elon Musk is threatening to establish what he calls, “The American Party.” One can possibly sympathize. After all he just went through and exposed and gutted waste in the government.

Indeed, some of the founders were concerned about political parties.

In a letter Jonathan Jackson of October 2, 1780, John Adams wrote, “There is nothing I dread So much, as a Division of the Republick into two great Parties, each arranged under its Leader, and concerting Measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble Apprehension is to be dreaded as the greatest political Evil, under our Constitution.”

George Washington found the “Party System” abhorrent and said so in his farewell address to Congress. “I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

“This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.
“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.
“Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another.”

Let’s look at what previous “Third-Parties” have wrought.

The first third-party with any showing was that of the Bull Moose party formed by Theodore Roosevelt in 1912. Roosevelt served as President from 1901 to 1909 following the death of Williams McKinley. The Rough Rider endorsed his friend, William Howard Taft, who won the election and succeeded Roosevelt. Roosevelt became disillusioned at the policies of Taft, and ran against him in the primary for the 1912 election, but the Republican Party choose Taft. Roosevelt formed the Bull Moose party to run against Taft, specifically.

Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.

What he succeeded in doing was get Woodrow Wilson elected. Democrat Wilson believed in the bureaucracy system of England and successfully instituted that in the United States. Along with that bane, he brought us the private corporation known as the Federal Reserve.

There was the “Green Party” led by Ralph Nadar in the sixties. No real damage there.

H. Ross Perot.

You might recall the H. Ross Perot period of the 90’s. Perot, from Texas, made millions as the founder and chief executive officer of Electronic Data Systems and Perot Systems. He ran as an Independent for President of the United States in 1992. He, like Musk, was disillusioned by the taxes and where they were spent. He actually touched the American vein and was nominated in 1996 by the Reform Party formed by grassroots supporters of Perot. In a speech he referred to black people as “You people,” and the media ran with it.

In 1992 he faced off with Bill Clinton and George Bush taking over 19-million votes, but no electoral votes or winning any states. Arguably, he lifted Democrat Bill Clinton to the win. In 1996 against Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, he did much poorer and probably did not influence the outcome of the election. Bill Clinton still would have won the election.

One of the things that third-parties caused is laws that tighten the U.S. into two specific parties keeping any their-party candidate out of political debates with the full cooperation of the so-called main stream media.

So now we face another threat of the formation of a third-party. One wonders the motivation. President Trump claims that Musk is upset about the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” because it eliminates electric vehicle mandates allowing the market to determine what they want. If this is the case, is this an American Party? Will their platform be you can buy what you want so long as it is an electric vehicle?

Does he want to promote individual freedom and individual responsibility as the founders wanted? Does he want to rip out the current tax system and put in something fairer? Do they want us to keep out of the affairs of foreign nations as the founders envisioned?

We can probably agree that—whatever the nature of the new, so-called American Party—we can probably agree that neither current party adheres to the Constitution of the United States of America. To begin to return to the Constitution we should beware of people that refer to the United States as a Democracy or Constitutional Democracy. The word democracy appears no where in the Constitution. Indeed, Article IV, Section 4 states specifically:

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion;…

So political parties should learn what a Republic is. And that doesn’t mean those governments that call themselves, “The People’s Republic Of…” which is another phrase meaning Communism. Actually democracy is Communism. Those “People’s Republic Of…” are actually totalitarian States. They do not select their leaders.

In simple terms, in this Republic we select people to adhere to Constitution and attend to their specific duties. The specific duties of the “Federal” government are outlined in Section 8 of the Constitution. The Congress has the ONLY authority to create laws. They cannot delegate those duties to bureaucracies, according to Gibbons V. Ogden.

The Constitution was debated and written under strict secrecy. The delegates felt that they could not have open and honest discussion if they had to explain to everyone everything they were putting into the Constitution. On September 18, 1787, they finally agreed on a document that they would submit to the States.

According to a document written by James McHenry, “A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy – A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.” Then McHenry added: “The Lady here alluded to was Mrs. Powel of Philada.”

Libertarian Candidate Thwarts 2nd Republican Attempt To Bump Him From The Ballot.

Photo Hess for Governor Web Site

Photo Hess for Governor Web Site

PRESS RELEASE – Arizona’s Republican leadership just got another black-eye, in their relentless attempts to keep Libertarian candidate for Governor, Barry Hess, off of the ballot. In a series of shady middle-of-the-night dealings last year, Republican leaders pushed HB 2305 to the Governor’s desk with exclusively Republican support; to make it almost impossible for Libertarian candidates to get on the ballot. In many instances, HB2305 required Libertarian candidates to gather more signatures for their nomination than there were members of the Libertarian party.

In September of last year, Hess led the largest and most diverse coalition in Arizona history to send HB2305 to the ballot, instead–by Citizen’s Referendum. It was the first successful such effort in almost 30 years, with almost as many attempts.

Republicans were set back on their heels and scrambled to repeal their own legislation in an effort to hide the issue from the Voters in November.

Last week, the GOP funded a challenge to 37 of Hess’s nominating signatures which would have left him 5 short of the required number needed to appear on the ballot to represent the Libertarian Party. Hess’ legal teams immediately found no less than 12 of the disputed signatures were in fact valid, and today, the County Recorders weighed in to verify 20 of the disputed signatures as valid. The suit was dismissed.

Hess commented, “We were never concerned about the numbers not being there, but now we’re concerned about the obvious frivolousness of the challenge, and the potential of fraud on the Court having been committed by only identifying the ‘throw away’ member of their club who agreed to be the Plaintiff; and not the real party behind the scheme.

It seems the goal is to shield GOP candidates from having to actually address the issues, and defend their positions on the campaign trail. Maybe the problem is my polling ahead of most of their candidates; whatever the case they must have wanted me off the ballot pretty badly to put up big money for a frivolous suit. What surprises me the most is that Snell & Wilmer would lend their credibility to these grade-school attempts to avoid having to compete for elected office.