July 7, 2025 • 35 mins
As Jon Caldara fills in for Ryan Schuiling, he shares details on why we don't have a third party in America, and how Elon Musk's "America Party" will perform.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Mister schuling, Noesta key in for the big man. I'm
John Caldera, give me a call. Three h three seven
to one, three eight two five five. So I've been
really curious about this end of a bromance. There's nothing
worse than a bromance gone bad. And when Trump had
the perfect romance with the richest man on.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
The planet, I was like, this is cool.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
And now they're broken up and it's sad, and Elon
is going to start his own party, and I'm trying
to figure out historically what this means.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
How easy is it to start a party.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
I know that through our history we've had parties that
have split and reconstituted and changed over time.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
So there's one guy that I like to ask.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
That's Rob Naedelson, who works with me at Independence Institute.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Professor, thank you for being here.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
It's good to be here.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
Unfortunately, John, your Stoyer key, you're stuck with who you're
stuck with at the time.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
So you're constitutional expert. You know a lot.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
About the history of common law, how that grew into
Magna carta, how it grew into our constitution, our declaration.
We have a two party system in America. But I
don't see in the Constitution anything that says anything about
parties or two parties. You know, I know, technically we've
(01:23):
got dozens of parties. I see him on the ballot
all the time. There's a Libertarian Party, there's a Constitutional Party,
and the Communist Party and this and that. But it
always comes down to two parties. Has it always been
that way?
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Well?
Speaker 4 (01:38):
Not always, John, You know, I want to clear up
what little myth that you read sometime, and that's the
claim that the founders did not anticipate the rise of parties.
Really no, they anticipated the rise of parties. They could
see that parties operated. The Whigs of the Tories operated
in England. In England right and during the revolution, a
(01:58):
lot of people who were branded Tories for essentially a
party separate from those who supported the revolution who were Whigs.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
We don't see a lot of reference to parties in
the founding era record because they called them factions.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Really use the different term factions.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
And if you if you look, for example, Federalist number
eight functionally Federalist number ten, you'll see James Madison warning
about the damage to factions. So when they when the Constitution,
they did anticipate the likelihood of founders of acre. They
of parties, but they created the constitution in order to
(02:37):
minimize the damage that.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Yeah, they were there, Whigs and Tories in England.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
I thought we had a nice little monarchy that we
were kicking off, not not a parliamentary system.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
So the Whigs and Tories? Are we talking about the
House of Lords that we're talking about or house of
the House of Commons? You know?
Speaker 1 (02:56):
And and did they have the same power back then
as the House of Commons does today? No, because back.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Then I get the sense that King George was the man.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
No, he wasn't that powerful, but the House of Commons
was pretty powerful.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
There was really a.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
Balance between the King, the Lords and the Commons, and
our constitutional system was based party on that balance. So
the president is kind of a stripped down version of
what the king was. The Senate something like the House
of Lords, the House of Representatives something like the House
of Commons. The situation has changed in England much more
(03:38):
than it's changed in the United States. Now, those three
institutions still can check and balance each other today and
today in England that anything that the House of Commons wants,
if it wants it badly enough, it'll ultimately get it.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
In the House of Lords is a social club, it
seems to not that they.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
Debate bills and then they can veto the old Provisionally,
if the House of Commons passes it again, then it
goes over the lord's veto.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
And today in England the monarch now King Charles.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
But for most of my life, Elizabelizabeth, they don't have
to sign a bill into law, but they always do.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
She always did.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
She never said no, But from what I understand, technically
she could go no, this is my country, screw you,
I'm not signing it.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Technically she could do that.
Speaker 4 (04:29):
It would be you know, the British Constitution is unwritten,
but there's certain things that are that are unthinkable. The
As a practical matter, the monarch is going to sign
anything that passes the Lords and the Commons, or just
the Commons. If the Commons passes it twice, and.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
If the pass the law to get rid of the monarchy,
would would he sign it?
Speaker 3 (04:55):
That's a good question. I hope we never put to
the test on that.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
I would love to see that right.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Bring it to the founding of our country and parties.
Now that Elon is going to make the America Party
very patriotic. I remember as a kid Carter's re election attempt.
He stayed in the Rose Garden because of the hostage situation.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
In Iran, which I'm glad is no longer a problem
or for us. He's many years later.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
And a guy named John Anderson ran as an independent. Yes,
he didn't get any electoral votes. And then years later
I remember Ross Perrot stealing the election from George h
and giving it to Bill Clinton. So I've seen candidates
pop out, but I don't see parties pop out. You
(05:48):
mentioned House of comments at parliamentary system, they kind of
pull together a majority from all these different factions or parties.
You know, the Israeli Parliament is just a god all
mess with gobs of parties.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Why don't we.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Have gobs of parties that have to pull together a
majority to elect a Speaker of the House.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
Well, you've already put your finger on one reason, John,
and that is the nature of our institutions. In Israel,
they have something that approximates proportional representation. So you get
ten percent of the votes, you get ten percent of
the represent representators of the Kanesset in Britain, they have
plurality wins or first past the post system, but it's
(06:32):
parliamentary and so you can have three parties in parliament
and one of the parties might very well be in
a position to negotiate to form a majority. We have
neither of those things in the United States, and the
United States people are generally elected by plurality votes president accepted,
and we don't have a parliamentary system. Now at the
(06:53):
state level, third parties have been somewhat more successful, but
there are just too many institutional challenges at the federal level,
which explains why we've really only had two successfully successful
third parties. The Whigs replaced the Federalists and the Republicans
(07:14):
replaced the Whigs.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Give me a quick history lesson on this. So, first
election we had George Washington, was he a member of
a party, Well.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
It depends upon whom you ask. If you asked George Washington,
the answer would have been no. As a practical matter,
he governed as a Federalist.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
And the difference between the Federalists and the Whigs roughly well,
at that time there were no Whigs.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
Between the Federalists and the Democratic Republicans, all right, the
Federalists were a bigger government party.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
They believed in a stronger central government.
Speaker 4 (07:49):
They believed in a national bank, for example, and other Federalists.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Yes, Hamilton, huge mistake, but we'll time.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
And there were Democratic Republicans were more agrarian, small government.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
He said democratic Republicans. That confuses me. Were they democrats?
Were they were Republicans?
Speaker 4 (08:10):
Well, they became democrats eventually, but at this point they
were sometimes referred to as the Republicans and sometimes referred
to as the Democratic.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Repartic and they were output in my simple terms, they
were more small government or at least less centralized national government.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
Now, this is the party of Thomas Jefferson, and it
became the party of James Madison, although he started out
as more of a federalist.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
So yeah, the Federalists who wanted more centralized power. He
had the Democrats. Which is there a connection between that
Democratic Party and today's Democratic Party.
Speaker 4 (08:44):
Yeah, the Democratic Republican Party became identified as the Democratic
Party around the time of Andrew.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Jackson, and it's been the Democratic Party ever since.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
That was there was that their first president or I
mean or Jefferson was their first when the first.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
Jefferson was their first president. Jackson has usually identified as
the first Demomocrat Party. But you have to understand that
the Democratic Party of Jefferson and Jackson was very difficult
different from the Democratic Party today. That the Democratic Party
of Jefferson and Jackson was a small government party and
(09:20):
remained a small government time.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
But I see the Republican Party growing into a big
government party.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
These things have changed over time.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
These things change over time according to the needs of elections.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
What happened to the Federalist Party.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
The Federalist Party eventually went out of business.
Speaker 4 (09:36):
The Federalist Party was based in New England, and as
the country expanded, you had more and more areas in
the country that were not New England and were inclined
therefore not to vote for the Federalists, and.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
They got replaced by Republicans. They were replaced by the Whigs.
The Wigs, all right, right, so and those they wore
funny hair? So is that why they No, it was
an imitation.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
It was a nickname was as a result of imitation
of the English Whigs.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
That was yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
The Whig Party was a really motley collection of everybody
who really wasn't a Democrat. There were northern Whigs who
were anti slavery and Southern Whigs who were pro slavery,
but they tended to echo the Federalist platform on the
issue of what they called in what they called internal improvements.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
You know, we want the federal government to build canals
and roads and things.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Like what centralized product projects.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
We have more centralized project nothing, of course, like we
have today, but infrastructure kind of projects.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
And Republicans came along when.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
Republicans ran their first presidential candidate in eighteen fifty six,
that was John Fremont, and they ran their first successful
presidential candidate in eighteen sixty.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Did that signify the end of the Wig Party?
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Yeah, the Whig Party really split on the issue of slavery.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
So when the Union split, the Whigs, in fact, even
before that, the Whigs really could could not bridge that divide.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
And since then we've had a Republican Party and a
Democratic Right.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
I mean, that's a long it's a long time talking
about one.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
Hundred and fifty years now you've had you've had third
parties that have arisen and have had influence, again more
on the state level than on the federal level. But
one example was the rise of the Populist Party in
the eighteen eighties. They tended to favor kind of soft socialism,
and they succeeded in party the Democrats to the left.
(11:44):
The Democrats kind of absorbed their platform and that became
which is.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Exactly what the Democrats did recently with the Green Party.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Yeah, it was twenty years ago.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
The Green Party was destroying Democrats' ability to win seats
in a lot of places, a lot of legislative seats
here in Colorado, and so the Democrats just absorbed them
and took all their policies and went crazy socialists on envirables.
Speaker 4 (12:10):
And one of the things that the Democrats did in
states was to initiate lawsuits to keep the Green Party
off the ballot entirely, which raises another reason why third
parties are difficult. You need ballot access. Ballot access is
difficult because you need a certain number of petition signers.
(12:30):
That number is fairly high. If you are perceived as
threatening that the Republicans or the Democrats, they'll do everything
they can to keep you off ballot lawsuits and other
perhaps less savory endeavors, and then ultimately they may just
absorb your program as the Democrats did with the Greens.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
So here in Colorado, we by law have two major
parties that are guaranteed ballot access, good their primary.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
To run petitions, they don't have to.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Run petitions all the rest.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
And then we've got a slew of secondary tier parties
that don't get the same privileges.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Yeah, they've got to run their own darn elections. They've
got to do that.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
So Libertarians, Constitution Party, And a few years back when
Tom tank Credo ran as a Constitutional.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Party candidate for the American American American Independent Party, I.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Think it was I thought it was the American Constitutional
Party whatever, whatever it was, all right, he he got
more than ten percent of the vote, which then took
that party and turned it into a major party for
a few years. Not that he did anything with it,
because as soon as, yeah, he wasn't running, they went
back to their point zero three percent.
Speaker 4 (13:45):
As you know, that was a rough election because the
Republicans had elected a guy who turned out not to
be what, well, let's just say, get a lot of baggage.
So Tom tank Credo decided to run and I think
he got about thirty seven percent. The Republican only got
eleven if you got.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Less than ten Republicans would have been turned into the
minority party.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
But that was a one off thing.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
As you said, nothing ever happened with time time creatos party,
and you do see that on the state level.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
Happening from time to time. Another example was the election
of Jesse Ventura right thirty seven percent of the vote
in a fractured field.
Speaker 4 (14:25):
Yet another example is the election of Senator Jim Buckley
in New York on the Conservative line, again thirty seven
percent in a fractured field.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
But usually those are.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
One election phenomena and not even that much happens usually
at the federal To.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Bring it to today, where the bromance between Trump and
Elon breaks up and Elon says, I'm just going to
start my own party.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Here's a guy who starts businesses.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
He's become a super billionaire worth apparently four hundred billion dollars,
which is hard to imagine anybody who worth that much.
And he does things quickly. He's a businessman. He shoots
things into space. Now we've got styling giving communications to
every part of the planet.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
I mean, just amazing stuff.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Will he be able to make a third party into
a viable alternative.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
My guess is no.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
I think what happened to Elon Muscow when he was
running for the Department of Governmental Efficiency and saw what
happened in the wake of that is an example of
how people who are very successful in.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Business think that they can apply the same rules to government.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
You see candidates stand up and say you should elect
me to the state legislator. I'm a successful businessman, and
I want to import business principles into government.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
That almost invariably doesn't work.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
Even in the case of Donald Trump, who was kind
of the exception that proves the rule, he admits that
during his first time he first termed, he didn't know
the rules. The rules are very different from what he
was used to, and he founded around and didn't accomplish
anything like he wanted to. He eventually learned the rules,
which is why he is much more effective in his
second term. But generally speaking, business people become profoundly disillusioned
(16:23):
when they learned that the rules are different. In the
case of Mosque, he headed an organization Department of Government
Efficiency that pointed out hundreds of millions of dollars of
savings billions of dollars of savings, only to see his reward, which.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Was that Congress spent all that money or more.
Speaker 4 (16:43):
Those of us who've been around in politics know that
there is a rule which is that increases in government
revenue or the availability of government revenue, pushes expenditures at
a level.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Greater than unity.
Speaker 4 (16:56):
What that means is that if you save a billion,
government will use that to justify spending one point one billion.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Right or in the economics we call it Parkinson's law,
which is things expand or shrink to fit the space available.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
In the case of government, they go beyond space available.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
And one you know, I could have told him that,
you know, you save a billion dollars, that that will
create a psychological situation in Congress, will though, spend one
point one billion. What Elon must needs to do, not
that he's asked. My advice is he needs to work
on structural reform because the problem in Congress is not
(17:40):
fundamentally personalities.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
They're good people there there are not so good people.
There are bad people. The problem is basically the institution
under which they work.
Speaker 4 (17:48):
In the nineteen thirties, the Supreme Court took the constitutional
lid off regulations and spending, and when they did that,
they created a completely new dynamic in which it is
essentially impossible to balance the wind hath ay regularity in
the nineteen thirties, and this was for an early forties.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
This is FDR time. And are we just talking about
debt spending?
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Is that spending generally?
Speaker 4 (18:16):
Before nineteen thirty six, it was understood that Congress could
spend money only on items identified in the Constitution and
certain incidental items. After nineteen thirty six, when the Supreme
Court said, Congress can spend whatever it wants on whatever,
on whatever, whatever furthers the general welfare and Congress is
(18:37):
the judge of the general welfare. As soon as they
did this, Congress was turned into a huge auction house
with unlimited amount of money available.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
At the same time, coincidentally, bankers created the Federal Reserve Bank.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
That was created back in the back in the nineteen tens.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
But I mean it really started coming into flexing its
ability to create money out of nothing.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
So you had a Congress that could.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Spend money that didn't exist and an organization that could
print money that didn't exist.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
It was a beautiful match made in hell.
Speaker 4 (19:15):
Now, we actually tried that at the state level in
the early nineteenth century.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
Now, most of the state constitutions before eighteen forty did
not require a dollar's budget. As a result, in any
states went bankrupt.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Rob Nagelsen.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
A call three or three seven, one, three, eight, two
five five with me in studios. Rob natleson my colleague
at Independence Institute. Check out his work at thinkfreedom dot org,
thinkfreedom dot org.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Wh Rob is a.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Constitutional scholar, a lawyer, retired professor, but still keeps on
teaching mostly me And I'm trying to figure out this
special relationship America has with two parties. And now that
Elon Musk is going to make his own party. Your
prediction is it's not going to go well because it's
(20:10):
not something you can just buy, is it.
Speaker 4 (20:13):
No, I don't think it's because the institutional pressures and
so forth are too strong.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
Where I was where I was going, what just before
the break was that.
Speaker 4 (20:22):
We used to have a lack of balanced budget requirements
in state constitutions, and as a result, many states overspent
and they they defaulted on their debt.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
This was in the middle part of the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
In other words, a state back when states actually had
some power right and they also would overspend to the
point of going to default on their debts, and so.
Speaker 4 (20:46):
State constitutions were amended to insert balanced budget requirements.
Speaker 5 (20:50):
As Colorado has a Colorado has and forty eight other
states have and since that's time, although the legislature often
fudget a little bit, no states have had that kind
of default.
Speaker 4 (21:04):
So my recommendation to Elon Musk, and he doesn't have
to pay less than a billion dollars for this, is
that what he really.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
Needs to do is he needs to work on institutions.
Speaker 4 (21:16):
He needs to change the system, and that can be
done by constitutional amendment. Propose a constitutional amendment through the
state convention method to balance the budget, or to impost
term limits, or to have other fiscal controls. And there
are actually are organizations that are ready made or already
(21:38):
doing that that could use the support.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
So, in other words, if Elon's frustration is that this big,
beautiful bill now puts us into the stratosphere on debt,
we're now what like one hundred and twenty percent of
GDP is on debt, we'll.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Focus in on that.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
If we had a balanced budget amendment on the federal
constitution the way we have it in the Colorado Constitution,
they would not be able to spend all this money.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
That is, they'd they'd have to make it.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Balance, and it would save our children and grandchildren and
great grandchildren. But because in politics we think of personality,
we don't think of principle, We don't think of infrastructure,
we don't think of how that procedure works. It's like,
we need to get guys like me and guys like
you to do what to balance the budget? Well, go balance.
(22:34):
You don't need a person to balance the budget. You
need an amendment.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
Yeah, let me give you a hypothetical, but it's a
realistic hypothetical. You're a congressman and you're elected on a
platform of strict fiscal conservatism. You're going to balance the
budget and you're going to honor the restrictions in the
Constitution on spending. Not the restrictions as the lack of instrictions,
as the Supreme Court has said, but what stution really says.
(23:01):
So somebody comes to you from your district and says, Congressman,
we need five million dollars maybe ten million dollars to
build a museum in our hometown in your district, and
you say, well, you know, there's nothing in the Constitution
authorizing the federal government to build museums in the state.
And furthermore, we're already very deeply in debt, so I'm
(23:23):
not going to support it. And so what your the
lobbyist says to you as well, thank you for your
principle as congressman, but you can expect us to be
supporting your opponent in the next selection. Right, if you
turn off enough special interests, most of which want excessive
and unconstitutional spending, you're out on your ear unless you
(23:44):
happen to be somebody like Ron Paul who used to
represent an extremely safe district. So otherwise you're going to
be knocked off in the general. You're going to be
knocked off in the primary. And every member of Congress
knows that. And so whatever personal philosophy objections they may
have to spending too much money, they're boxed into a
(24:04):
corner and they recognize, even the physical conservatives recognized, gosh,
I'm gonna have to make compromises here, because if I
don't make that compromise, they're gonna elect somebody who is,
you know, a bigger spender than I am. And I'm
I'm talking about the people who really wanted control spending,
but can't.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
That's just a reality.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
By by contrast, in a in a in an environment
where there's a constitutional rules which says you're you have
to balance the budget or that you can't spend money
on museums, that you can say to the constituent, constituent, honestly,
you know, I'd like to be able to help you,
but I'm powerless to do so.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
And you can.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
You can primary me, you can kick me out of office,
but the guy who replaces me, it's still still there's
still no money.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
That's right. That's right.
Speaker 4 (24:50):
And as I said, there are a number of organizations
that are out there, some put some just pushing a
balanced budget, some just pushing term limits, some uh a
small package of amendments. What they all have in common
is a recognition that Congress is never going to propose
a constitutional amendment itself, and so it's going to be
necessary for the States to call a Convention of the
(25:12):
States under Article five of the Constitution to propose an
amendment for state ratification.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
So, in that ugliness of political pragmatism, Pley put you
on the spot. You are the final vote in Congress
on the one big beautiful bill and it is up
to you whether it passes or it fails, and there's
no other options.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
That's the way it is, and it's not like another
one's going to pass. Would you vote for it?
Speaker 4 (25:42):
Probably yeah, because it would have been absolutely political suicide.
And I know that anyone who would replace me in Congress,
with the exception of yourself, would be more phiscically liberal
than I.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
What if you were tried differently, you're term limited, you
don't care if you're re elected, that's different.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
That's different.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
Then I might very well vote for it, well for
it against it. There there is some empirical evidence that
indicates at the state level that term limited members of
Congress are more fiscally conservative than they are in legislatures
without term limits. Now, the one of the traditional arguments
against term limits as well, if you've got a constantly
(26:24):
changing number of members of the legislature, the real governance
is done by the.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
Bureaucrats, and that, yeah, there is.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
But the response to that is number one, The governan
is done by the bureaucrats anyway, And the empirical evidence
actually contradicts term limited legislators are somewhat more fiscally conservative.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Let me add to that. It's not the bureaucrats. It's
the lobbying level that lobbyists stay. And so a lot
of a lot of institutional college in Colorado lies with
older lobbyists because after term limits, they're the ones that
stick around. And no, you could do this procedurally, No
(27:07):
you could do that.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
Now I can do this.
Speaker 4 (27:09):
But yeah, if you want to be complete about it,
it's and this is true I think at the state level.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
It's also true. That certainly true. At the federal level,
it's lobbyists, and it's also.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Which is which is a code for special interests, those
minority interests that can afford and it's.
Speaker 4 (27:28):
Also and it's also bureaucrats, and it's also legislators who
have been.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Around and have a lot of seniority and can command
a lot of votes.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
All right, bringing it back to Elon, have you seen
anything like this in the past. I remember Ross Perrot,
wealthy guy. He brought together the Reform Party and it
actually got some stuff, got Bill Clinton elected, which all right,
(27:58):
but he never became president. The party never received a
single electoral vote. I'm still trying to understand why in
America we keep defaulting to two parties when the rest
of the world seems to have multiple parties inside GOM.
Speaker 4 (28:19):
Yeah, and again I think the the the reason is institutions.
I mean, that's why the institutions need to be changed.
But let me give you a fairly recent example. You
mayber a guy named Brian mulroney. He was the Prime
Minister of Canada. He was a Progressive Conservative prime minister.
That was the name of the party, the Progressive Conservative
(28:41):
Party right, and.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
It was a very.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
Kind of a party that was establishment and a fairly
big government party. And finally the Conservative Party base got
fed up with them and a new party arose in
Western Canada called the Reform Party. Reform Party became very
successful in Alberta and other Western provinces, and eventually there
(29:11):
was an election I figured exactly which year it was
in which the Reform Party totally wiped out the Progressive
Conservative Party. Progressive Conservative Party went from a parliamentary majority
to two votes in the in parliament. That was it,
But of course that handed the victory over to the Liberals.
Interestingly enough, the Liberals got the message and actually worked
(29:31):
hard to try to do something about Canada's deficit spending
in Canada's debt, and ultimately the Progressive Conservatives became the
Conservatives and they emerged with reform. That's an example of
a successful third party that did at least was successful.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
For a while.
Speaker 4 (29:50):
But it would be much harder in the United States,
where we have a more fractured and we have a
system that's based on division of powers.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Part of I just want to make certain there's there's
nothing unconstitutional or illegal about another party coming in and
becoming a third force that is not Republican, not Democrat.
You know, if it could be done organically, you would
think the Libertarian Party, which has been around for fifty years.
(30:22):
I think their start was actually here in Colorado, that
they would be that natural third party that is socially liberal,
fiscally conservative, and a lot of people raises the question.
Speaker 4 (30:34):
As why Elon Musk, assumely he wants a third party
to be successful, doesn't simply take over the Libertarian Party.
I mean, they've got a certain infrastructure that ballot access
in some states.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
But again I think it's partly exactly because large I'm
a small L libertarian. Large L Libertarians are cats. They
do not work well together.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
You cannot hear them. They're all individuals, and that makes
the parties.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
Makes the party easier to take over.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
Right, maybe, but.
Speaker 4 (31:07):
He's better off he's I mean, look, if he wants
to work on personalities, he'd be better off intervening in
Republican primary elections. But it is the best thing he
can do where there are no limits on his spending
or whatever, would be to support an institutional change, a
constitutional amendment that forces the government to become fiscally responsible,
(31:32):
and he could also fund the necessary public relations campaign.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
We've only got a minute here before we have to
take a quick breather, but there's no doubt in my
mind that our federal government is facing insolvency.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Does it happen in five years, does it happen in
twenty years.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
Probably not much longer after that. You know, I might
not be around, but it's coming, and it's coming pretty hard.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
At that point.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Is there a is there a constitutional amendment to people
go wait a second, we can't do this anymore. It
is so obvious that we are running into a brick wall.
Fiscally speaking, Elon is not wrong.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
It's it.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
We We've never had debt this high in peace time,
and only once in war, did it ever come close
to this? And we're not buying our way out of
you know, fighting for you know, keeping keeping the communists.
Speaker 4 (32:28):
The view of the view of some people is it's
got to hit bottom before you can effectively reform it.
And again there's evidence for that in other Western democracies.
I mean, it took a situation where Great Britain was
a complete basket case to create.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Them market manufacture and by the way, in this short
time since they have slid back and they're ready to
be a financials case.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
It took. It took in New Zealand.
Speaker 4 (32:58):
New Zealand had to become a best good case to
produce a Roger Douglas. Same same kind of phenomenon. And
most recently Argentina became a bipesca case right before it
produced Xavier Mulay.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Let's just hope it doesn't go that far.
Speaker 4 (33:15):
And one of the things that Elon muskn do with
his money he is to run the public relations campaign
necessary to get people to see that we have to
act before we do declare bankruptcy and it and it
has to happen, it has, it has to happen. Eventually,
it will presumably happen one way or another. Elon Musk
(33:35):
could do a great service to the country by running
the political campaign necessary and by uh by running the
constitutional campaign necessary to get the reforms we need.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
I'm happy if he just gave me a free car. Yeah,
well that would help to Rob Niedlson.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
People want to get information, go to thinkfreedom dot org.
Do you do our and click on the constitution tab
Constitution tab this. This is fascinating. Hey, thank you so much,
Rob Nagelsen, Thank you, sir. I'm John Caldera back after this.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Keep it here. Six point thirty khow.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
Seven one three eight two five five that's seven to
one three talk Elon Musk's America Party. It's it's too bad.
I wish the man luck. I've become more and more
of an Elon fan. The whole Doge experience should have
(34:36):
been an education for us.
Speaker 5 (34:38):
All that.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
That you're not going to trim government by little bits
here and little bits there. There is no incentive for
government to ever get more efficient. In fact, it's the
opposite way. Government is rewarded for inefficiency, government is rewarded
for failure.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
There are more forest fires, so.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
They give more money to the forest Department because they
did the lows e job, so they reward them. It
happens everywhere, in every part of government. The only way
to stop it is to stop the money. Here in
Colorado we do it with a Balanced Budget Amendment and
(35:29):
the Taxpayer Bill of Rights
Mister schuling, Noesta key in for the big man. I'm
John Caldera, give me a call. Three h three seven
to one, three eight two five five. So I've been
really curious about this end of a bromance. There's nothing
worse than a bromance gone bad. And when Trump had
the perfect romance with the richest man on.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
The planet, I was like, this is cool.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
And now they're broken up and it's sad, and Elon
is going to start his own party, and I'm trying
to figure out historically what this means.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
How easy is it to start a party.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
I know that through our history we've had parties that
have split and reconstituted and changed over time.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
So there's one guy that I like to ask.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
That's Rob Naedelson, who works with me at Independence Institute.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Professor, thank you for being here.
Speaker 3 (00:51):
It's good to be here.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
Unfortunately, John, your Stoyer key, you're stuck with who you're
stuck with at the time.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
So you're constitutional expert. You know a lot.
Speaker 1 (01:02):
About the history of common law, how that grew into
Magna carta, how it grew into our constitution, our declaration.
We have a two party system in America. But I
don't see in the Constitution anything that says anything about
parties or two parties. You know, I know, technically we've
(01:23):
got dozens of parties. I see him on the ballot
all the time. There's a Libertarian Party, there's a Constitutional Party,
and the Communist Party and this and that. But it
always comes down to two parties. Has it always been
that way?
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Well?
Speaker 4 (01:38):
Not always, John, You know, I want to clear up
what little myth that you read sometime, and that's the
claim that the founders did not anticipate the rise of parties.
Really no, they anticipated the rise of parties. They could
see that parties operated. The Whigs of the Tories operated
in England. In England right and during the revolution, a
(01:58):
lot of people who were branded Tories for essentially a
party separate from those who supported the revolution who were Whigs.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
We don't see a lot of reference to parties in
the founding era record because they called them factions.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Really use the different term factions.
Speaker 4 (02:15):
And if you if you look, for example, Federalist number
eight functionally Federalist number ten, you'll see James Madison warning
about the damage to factions. So when they when the Constitution,
they did anticipate the likelihood of founders of acre. They
of parties, but they created the constitution in order to
(02:37):
minimize the damage that.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Yeah, they were there, Whigs and Tories in England.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
I thought we had a nice little monarchy that we
were kicking off, not not a parliamentary system.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
So the Whigs and Tories? Are we talking about the
House of Lords that we're talking about or house of
the House of Commons? You know?
Speaker 1 (02:56):
And and did they have the same power back then
as the House of Commons does today? No, because back.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
Then I get the sense that King George was the man.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
No, he wasn't that powerful, but the House of Commons
was pretty powerful.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
There was really a.
Speaker 4 (03:16):
Balance between the King, the Lords and the Commons, and
our constitutional system was based party on that balance. So
the president is kind of a stripped down version of
what the king was. The Senate something like the House
of Lords, the House of Representatives something like the House
of Commons. The situation has changed in England much more
(03:38):
than it's changed in the United States. Now, those three
institutions still can check and balance each other today and
today in England that anything that the House of Commons wants,
if it wants it badly enough, it'll ultimately get it.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
In the House of Lords is a social club, it
seems to not that they.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
Debate bills and then they can veto the old Provisionally,
if the House of Commons passes it again, then it
goes over the lord's veto.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
And today in England the monarch now King Charles.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
But for most of my life, Elizabelizabeth, they don't have
to sign a bill into law, but they always do.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
She always did.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
She never said no, But from what I understand, technically
she could go no, this is my country, screw you,
I'm not signing it.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
Technically she could do that.
Speaker 4 (04:29):
It would be you know, the British Constitution is unwritten,
but there's certain things that are that are unthinkable. The
As a practical matter, the monarch is going to sign
anything that passes the Lords and the Commons, or just
the Commons. If the Commons passes it twice, and.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
If the pass the law to get rid of the monarchy,
would would he sign it?
Speaker 3 (04:55):
That's a good question. I hope we never put to
the test on that.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
I would love to see that right.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Bring it to the founding of our country and parties.
Now that Elon is going to make the America Party
very patriotic. I remember as a kid Carter's re election attempt.
He stayed in the Rose Garden because of the hostage situation.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
In Iran, which I'm glad is no longer a problem
or for us. He's many years later.
Speaker 1 (05:25):
And a guy named John Anderson ran as an independent. Yes,
he didn't get any electoral votes. And then years later
I remember Ross Perrot stealing the election from George h
and giving it to Bill Clinton. So I've seen candidates
pop out, but I don't see parties pop out. You
(05:48):
mentioned House of comments at parliamentary system, they kind of
pull together a majority from all these different factions or parties.
You know, the Israeli Parliament is just a god all
mess with gobs of parties.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Why don't we.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
Have gobs of parties that have to pull together a
majority to elect a Speaker of the House.
Speaker 4 (06:10):
Well, you've already put your finger on one reason, John,
and that is the nature of our institutions. In Israel,
they have something that approximates proportional representation. So you get
ten percent of the votes, you get ten percent of
the represent representators of the Kanesset in Britain, they have
plurality wins or first past the post system, but it's
(06:32):
parliamentary and so you can have three parties in parliament
and one of the parties might very well be in
a position to negotiate to form a majority. We have
neither of those things in the United States, and the
United States people are generally elected by plurality votes president accepted,
and we don't have a parliamentary system. Now at the
(06:53):
state level, third parties have been somewhat more successful, but
there are just too many institutional challenges at the federal level,
which explains why we've really only had two successfully successful
third parties. The Whigs replaced the Federalists and the Republicans
(07:14):
replaced the Whigs.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Give me a quick history lesson on this. So, first
election we had George Washington, was he a member of
a party, Well.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
It depends upon whom you ask. If you asked George Washington,
the answer would have been no. As a practical matter,
he governed as a Federalist.
Speaker 2 (07:33):
And the difference between the Federalists and the Whigs roughly well,
at that time there were no Whigs.
Speaker 4 (07:40):
Between the Federalists and the Democratic Republicans, all right, the
Federalists were a bigger government party.
Speaker 3 (07:47):
They believed in a stronger central government.
Speaker 4 (07:49):
They believed in a national bank, for example, and other Federalists.
Speaker 2 (07:54):
Yes, Hamilton, huge mistake, but we'll time.
Speaker 4 (07:57):
And there were Democratic Republicans were more agrarian, small government.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
He said democratic Republicans. That confuses me. Were they democrats?
Were they were Republicans?
Speaker 4 (08:10):
Well, they became democrats eventually, but at this point they
were sometimes referred to as the Republicans and sometimes referred
to as the Democratic.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Repartic and they were output in my simple terms, they
were more small government or at least less centralized national government.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
Now, this is the party of Thomas Jefferson, and it
became the party of James Madison, although he started out
as more of a federalist.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
So yeah, the Federalists who wanted more centralized power. He
had the Democrats. Which is there a connection between that
Democratic Party and today's Democratic Party.
Speaker 4 (08:44):
Yeah, the Democratic Republican Party became identified as the Democratic
Party around the time of Andrew.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Jackson, and it's been the Democratic Party ever since.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
That was there was that their first president or I
mean or Jefferson was their first when the first.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
Jefferson was their first president. Jackson has usually identified as
the first Demomocrat Party. But you have to understand that
the Democratic Party of Jefferson and Jackson was very difficult
different from the Democratic Party today. That the Democratic Party
of Jefferson and Jackson was a small government party and
(09:20):
remained a small government time.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
But I see the Republican Party growing into a big
government party.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
These things have changed over time.
Speaker 3 (09:29):
These things change over time according to the needs of elections.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
What happened to the Federalist Party.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
The Federalist Party eventually went out of business.
Speaker 4 (09:36):
The Federalist Party was based in New England, and as
the country expanded, you had more and more areas in
the country that were not New England and were inclined
therefore not to vote for the Federalists, and.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
They got replaced by Republicans. They were replaced by the Whigs.
The Wigs, all right, right, so and those they wore
funny hair? So is that why they No, it was
an imitation.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
It was a nickname was as a result of imitation
of the English Whigs.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
That was yeah.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
The Whig Party was a really motley collection of everybody
who really wasn't a Democrat. There were northern Whigs who
were anti slavery and Southern Whigs who were pro slavery,
but they tended to echo the Federalist platform on the
issue of what they called in what they called internal improvements.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
You know, we want the federal government to build canals
and roads and things.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Like what centralized product projects.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
We have more centralized project nothing, of course, like we
have today, but infrastructure kind of projects.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
And Republicans came along when.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
Republicans ran their first presidential candidate in eighteen fifty six,
that was John Fremont, and they ran their first successful
presidential candidate in eighteen sixty.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
Abraham Lincoln.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Exactly.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Did that signify the end of the Wig Party?
Speaker 3 (11:02):
Yeah, the Whig Party really split on the issue of slavery.
Speaker 4 (11:06):
So when the Union split, the Whigs, in fact, even
before that, the Whigs really could could not bridge that divide.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
And since then we've had a Republican Party and a
Democratic Right.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
I mean, that's a long it's a long time talking
about one.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
Hundred and fifty years now you've had you've had third
parties that have arisen and have had influence, again more
on the state level than on the federal level. But
one example was the rise of the Populist Party in
the eighteen eighties. They tended to favor kind of soft socialism,
and they succeeded in party the Democrats to the left.
(11:44):
The Democrats kind of absorbed their platform and that became
which is.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
Exactly what the Democrats did recently with the Green Party.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Yeah, it was twenty years ago.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
The Green Party was destroying Democrats' ability to win seats
in a lot of places, a lot of legislative seats
here in Colorado, and so the Democrats just absorbed them
and took all their policies and went crazy socialists on envirables.
Speaker 4 (12:10):
And one of the things that the Democrats did in
states was to initiate lawsuits to keep the Green Party
off the ballot entirely, which raises another reason why third
parties are difficult. You need ballot access. Ballot access is
difficult because you need a certain number of petition signers.
(12:30):
That number is fairly high. If you are perceived as
threatening that the Republicans or the Democrats, they'll do everything
they can to keep you off ballot lawsuits and other
perhaps less savory endeavors, and then ultimately they may just
absorb your program as the Democrats did with the Greens.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
So here in Colorado, we by law have two major
parties that are guaranteed ballot access, good their primary.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
To run petitions, they don't have to.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Run petitions all the rest.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
And then we've got a slew of secondary tier parties
that don't get the same privileges.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
Yeah, they've got to run their own darn elections. They've
got to do that.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
So Libertarians, Constitution Party, And a few years back when
Tom tank Credo ran as a Constitutional.
Speaker 3 (13:20):
Party candidate for the American American American Independent Party, I.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Think it was I thought it was the American Constitutional
Party whatever, whatever it was, all right, he he got
more than ten percent of the vote, which then took
that party and turned it into a major party for
a few years. Not that he did anything with it,
because as soon as, yeah, he wasn't running, they went
back to their point zero three percent.
Speaker 4 (13:45):
As you know, that was a rough election because the
Republicans had elected a guy who turned out not to
be what, well, let's just say, get a lot of baggage.
So Tom tank Credo decided to run and I think
he got about thirty seven percent. The Republican only got
eleven if you got.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Less than ten Republicans would have been turned into the
minority party.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
But that was a one off thing.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
As you said, nothing ever happened with time time creatos party,
and you do see that on the state level.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
Happening from time to time. Another example was the election
of Jesse Ventura right thirty seven percent of the vote
in a fractured field.
Speaker 4 (14:25):
Yet another example is the election of Senator Jim Buckley
in New York on the Conservative line, again thirty seven
percent in a fractured field.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
But usually those are.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
One election phenomena and not even that much happens usually
at the federal To.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Bring it to today, where the bromance between Trump and
Elon breaks up and Elon says, I'm just going to
start my own party.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Here's a guy who starts businesses.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
He's become a super billionaire worth apparently four hundred billion dollars,
which is hard to imagine anybody who worth that much.
And he does things quickly. He's a businessman. He shoots
things into space. Now we've got styling giving communications to
every part of the planet.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
I mean, just amazing stuff.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Will he be able to make a third party into
a viable alternative.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
My guess is no.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
I think what happened to Elon Muscow when he was
running for the Department of Governmental Efficiency and saw what
happened in the wake of that is an example of
how people who are very successful in.
Speaker 3 (15:40):
Business think that they can apply the same rules to government.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
You see candidates stand up and say you should elect
me to the state legislator. I'm a successful businessman, and
I want to import business principles into government.
Speaker 3 (15:55):
That almost invariably doesn't work.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
Even in the case of Donald Trump, who was kind
of the exception that proves the rule, he admits that
during his first time he first termed, he didn't know
the rules. The rules are very different from what he
was used to, and he founded around and didn't accomplish
anything like he wanted to. He eventually learned the rules,
which is why he is much more effective in his
second term. But generally speaking, business people become profoundly disillusioned
(16:23):
when they learned that the rules are different. In the
case of Mosque, he headed an organization Department of Government
Efficiency that pointed out hundreds of millions of dollars of
savings billions of dollars of savings, only to see his reward, which.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Was that Congress spent all that money or more.
Speaker 4 (16:43):
Those of us who've been around in politics know that
there is a rule which is that increases in government
revenue or the availability of government revenue, pushes expenditures at
a level.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Greater than unity.
Speaker 4 (16:56):
What that means is that if you save a billion,
government will use that to justify spending one point one billion.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Right or in the economics we call it Parkinson's law,
which is things expand or shrink to fit the space available.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
In the case of government, they go beyond space available.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
And one you know, I could have told him that,
you know, you save a billion dollars, that that will
create a psychological situation in Congress, will though, spend one
point one billion. What Elon must needs to do, not
that he's asked. My advice is he needs to work
on structural reform because the problem in Congress is not
(17:40):
fundamentally personalities.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
They're good people there there are not so good people.
There are bad people. The problem is basically the institution
under which they work.
Speaker 4 (17:48):
In the nineteen thirties, the Supreme Court took the constitutional
lid off regulations and spending, and when they did that,
they created a completely new dynamic in which it is
essentially impossible to balance the wind hath ay regularity in
the nineteen thirties, and this was for an early forties.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
This is FDR time. And are we just talking about
debt spending?
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Is that spending generally?
Speaker 4 (18:16):
Before nineteen thirty six, it was understood that Congress could
spend money only on items identified in the Constitution and
certain incidental items. After nineteen thirty six, when the Supreme
Court said, Congress can spend whatever it wants on whatever,
on whatever, whatever furthers the general welfare and Congress is
(18:37):
the judge of the general welfare. As soon as they
did this, Congress was turned into a huge auction house
with unlimited amount of money available.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
At the same time, coincidentally, bankers created the Federal Reserve Bank.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
That was created back in the back in the nineteen tens.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
But I mean it really started coming into flexing its
ability to create money out of nothing.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
That's right.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
So you had a Congress that could.
Speaker 1 (19:06):
Spend money that didn't exist and an organization that could
print money that didn't exist.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
It was a beautiful match made in hell.
Speaker 4 (19:15):
Now, we actually tried that at the state level in
the early nineteenth century.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
Now, most of the state constitutions before eighteen forty did
not require a dollar's budget. As a result, in any
states went bankrupt.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Rob Nagelsen.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
A call three or three seven, one, three, eight, two
five five with me in studios. Rob natleson my colleague
at Independence Institute. Check out his work at thinkfreedom dot org,
thinkfreedom dot org.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Wh Rob is a.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Constitutional scholar, a lawyer, retired professor, but still keeps on
teaching mostly me And I'm trying to figure out this
special relationship America has with two parties. And now that
Elon Musk is going to make his own party. Your
prediction is it's not going to go well because it's
(20:10):
not something you can just buy, is it.
Speaker 4 (20:13):
No, I don't think it's because the institutional pressures and
so forth are too strong.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
Where I was where I was going, what just before
the break was that.
Speaker 4 (20:22):
We used to have a lack of balanced budget requirements
in state constitutions, and as a result, many states overspent
and they they defaulted on their debt.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
This was in the middle part of the nineteenth century.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
In other words, a state back when states actually had
some power right and they also would overspend to the
point of going to default on their debts, and so.
Speaker 4 (20:46):
State constitutions were amended to insert balanced budget requirements.
Speaker 5 (20:50):
As Colorado has a Colorado has and forty eight other
states have and since that's time, although the legislature often
fudget a little bit, no states have had that kind
of default.
Speaker 4 (21:04):
So my recommendation to Elon Musk, and he doesn't have
to pay less than a billion dollars for this, is
that what he really.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
Needs to do is he needs to work on institutions.
Speaker 4 (21:16):
He needs to change the system, and that can be
done by constitutional amendment. Propose a constitutional amendment through the
state convention method to balance the budget, or to impost
term limits, or to have other fiscal controls. And there
are actually are organizations that are ready made or already
(21:38):
doing that that could use the support.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
So, in other words, if Elon's frustration is that this big,
beautiful bill now puts us into the stratosphere on debt,
we're now what like one hundred and twenty percent of
GDP is on debt, we'll.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Focus in on that.
Speaker 1 (21:57):
If we had a balanced budget amendment on the federal
constitution the way we have it in the Colorado Constitution,
they would not be able to spend all this money.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
That is, they'd they'd have to make it.
Speaker 1 (22:11):
Balance, and it would save our children and grandchildren and
great grandchildren. But because in politics we think of personality,
we don't think of principle, We don't think of infrastructure,
we don't think of how that procedure works. It's like,
we need to get guys like me and guys like
you to do what to balance the budget? Well, go balance.
(22:34):
You don't need a person to balance the budget. You
need an amendment.
Speaker 4 (22:37):
Yeah, let me give you a hypothetical, but it's a
realistic hypothetical. You're a congressman and you're elected on a
platform of strict fiscal conservatism. You're going to balance the
budget and you're going to honor the restrictions in the
Constitution on spending. Not the restrictions as the lack of instrictions,
as the Supreme Court has said, but what stution really says.
(23:01):
So somebody comes to you from your district and says, Congressman,
we need five million dollars maybe ten million dollars to
build a museum in our hometown in your district, and
you say, well, you know, there's nothing in the Constitution
authorizing the federal government to build museums in the state.
And furthermore, we're already very deeply in debt, so I'm
(23:23):
not going to support it. And so what your the
lobbyist says to you as well, thank you for your
principle as congressman, but you can expect us to be
supporting your opponent in the next selection. Right, if you
turn off enough special interests, most of which want excessive
and unconstitutional spending, you're out on your ear unless you
(23:44):
happen to be somebody like Ron Paul who used to
represent an extremely safe district. So otherwise you're going to
be knocked off in the general. You're going to be
knocked off in the primary. And every member of Congress
knows that. And so whatever personal philosophy objections they may
have to spending too much money, they're boxed into a
(24:04):
corner and they recognize, even the physical conservatives recognized, gosh,
I'm gonna have to make compromises here, because if I
don't make that compromise, they're gonna elect somebody who is,
you know, a bigger spender than I am. And I'm
I'm talking about the people who really wanted control spending,
but can't.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
That's just a reality.
Speaker 4 (24:22):
By by contrast, in a in a in an environment
where there's a constitutional rules which says you're you have
to balance the budget or that you can't spend money
on museums, that you can say to the constituent, constituent, honestly,
you know, I'd like to be able to help you,
but I'm powerless to do so.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
And you can.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
You can primary me, you can kick me out of office,
but the guy who replaces me, it's still still there's
still no money.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
That's right. That's right.
Speaker 4 (24:50):
And as I said, there are a number of organizations
that are out there, some put some just pushing a
balanced budget, some just pushing term limits, some uh a
small package of amendments. What they all have in common
is a recognition that Congress is never going to propose
a constitutional amendment itself, and so it's going to be
necessary for the States to call a Convention of the
(25:12):
States under Article five of the Constitution to propose an
amendment for state ratification.
Speaker 1 (25:19):
So, in that ugliness of political pragmatism, Pley put you
on the spot. You are the final vote in Congress
on the one big beautiful bill and it is up
to you whether it passes or it fails, and there's
no other options.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
That's the way it is, and it's not like another
one's going to pass. Would you vote for it?
Speaker 4 (25:42):
Probably yeah, because it would have been absolutely political suicide.
And I know that anyone who would replace me in Congress,
with the exception of yourself, would be more phiscically liberal
than I.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
What if you were tried differently, you're term limited, you
don't care if you're re elected, that's different.
Speaker 3 (26:02):
That's different.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
Then I might very well vote for it, well for
it against it. There there is some empirical evidence that
indicates at the state level that term limited members of
Congress are more fiscally conservative than they are in legislatures
without term limits. Now, the one of the traditional arguments
against term limits as well, if you've got a constantly
(26:24):
changing number of members of the legislature, the real governance
is done by the.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
Bureaucrats, and that, yeah, there is.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
But the response to that is number one, The governan
is done by the bureaucrats anyway, And the empirical evidence
actually contradicts term limited legislators are somewhat more fiscally conservative.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Let me add to that. It's not the bureaucrats. It's
the lobbying level that lobbyists stay. And so a lot
of a lot of institutional college in Colorado lies with
older lobbyists because after term limits, they're the ones that
stick around. And no, you could do this procedurally, No
(27:07):
you could do that.
Speaker 2 (27:08):
Now I can do this.
Speaker 4 (27:09):
But yeah, if you want to be complete about it,
it's and this is true I think at the state level.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
It's also true. That certainly true. At the federal level,
it's lobbyists, and it's also.
Speaker 1 (27:21):
Which is which is a code for special interests, those
minority interests that can afford and it's.
Speaker 4 (27:28):
Also and it's also bureaucrats, and it's also legislators who
have been.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
Around and have a lot of seniority and can command
a lot of votes.
Speaker 1 (27:38):
All right, bringing it back to Elon, have you seen
anything like this in the past. I remember Ross Perrot,
wealthy guy. He brought together the Reform Party and it
actually got some stuff, got Bill Clinton elected, which all right,
(27:58):
but he never became president. The party never received a
single electoral vote. I'm still trying to understand why in
America we keep defaulting to two parties when the rest
of the world seems to have multiple parties inside GOM.
Speaker 4 (28:19):
Yeah, and again I think the the the reason is institutions.
I mean, that's why the institutions need to be changed.
But let me give you a fairly recent example. You
mayber a guy named Brian mulroney. He was the Prime
Minister of Canada. He was a Progressive Conservative prime minister.
That was the name of the party, the Progressive Conservative
(28:41):
Party right, and.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
It was a very.
Speaker 4 (28:48):
Kind of a party that was establishment and a fairly
big government party. And finally the Conservative Party base got
fed up with them and a new party arose in
Western Canada called the Reform Party. Reform Party became very
successful in Alberta and other Western provinces, and eventually there
(29:11):
was an election I figured exactly which year it was
in which the Reform Party totally wiped out the Progressive
Conservative Party. Progressive Conservative Party went from a parliamentary majority
to two votes in the in parliament. That was it,
But of course that handed the victory over to the Liberals.
Interestingly enough, the Liberals got the message and actually worked
(29:31):
hard to try to do something about Canada's deficit spending
in Canada's debt, and ultimately the Progressive Conservatives became the
Conservatives and they emerged with reform. That's an example of
a successful third party that did at least was successful.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
For a while.
Speaker 4 (29:50):
But it would be much harder in the United States,
where we have a more fractured and we have a
system that's based on division of powers.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Part of I just want to make certain there's there's
nothing unconstitutional or illegal about another party coming in and
becoming a third force that is not Republican, not Democrat.
You know, if it could be done organically, you would
think the Libertarian Party, which has been around for fifty years.
(30:22):
I think their start was actually here in Colorado, that
they would be that natural third party that is socially liberal,
fiscally conservative, and a lot of people raises the question.
Speaker 4 (30:34):
As why Elon Musk, assumely he wants a third party
to be successful, doesn't simply take over the Libertarian Party.
I mean, they've got a certain infrastructure that ballot access
in some states.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
But again I think it's partly exactly because large I'm
a small L libertarian. Large L Libertarians are cats. They
do not work well together.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
You cannot hear them. They're all individuals, and that makes
the parties.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
Makes the party easier to take over.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
Right, maybe, but.
Speaker 4 (31:07):
He's better off he's I mean, look, if he wants
to work on personalities, he'd be better off intervening in
Republican primary elections. But it is the best thing he
can do where there are no limits on his spending
or whatever, would be to support an institutional change, a
constitutional amendment that forces the government to become fiscally responsible,
(31:32):
and he could also fund the necessary public relations campaign.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
We've only got a minute here before we have to
take a quick breather, but there's no doubt in my
mind that our federal government is facing insolvency.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Does it happen in five years, does it happen in
twenty years.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
Probably not much longer after that. You know, I might
not be around, but it's coming, and it's coming pretty hard.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
At that point.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Is there a is there a constitutional amendment to people
go wait a second, we can't do this anymore. It
is so obvious that we are running into a brick wall.
Fiscally speaking, Elon is not wrong.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
It's it.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
We We've never had debt this high in peace time,
and only once in war, did it ever come close
to this? And we're not buying our way out of
you know, fighting for you know, keeping keeping the communists.
Speaker 4 (32:28):
The view of the view of some people is it's
got to hit bottom before you can effectively reform it.
And again there's evidence for that in other Western democracies.
I mean, it took a situation where Great Britain was
a complete basket case to create.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
Them market manufacture and by the way, in this short
time since they have slid back and they're ready to
be a financials case.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
It took. It took in New Zealand.
Speaker 4 (32:58):
New Zealand had to become a best good case to
produce a Roger Douglas. Same same kind of phenomenon. And
most recently Argentina became a bipesca case right before it
produced Xavier Mulay.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Let's just hope it doesn't go that far.
Speaker 4 (33:15):
And one of the things that Elon muskn do with
his money he is to run the public relations campaign
necessary to get people to see that we have to
act before we do declare bankruptcy and it and it
has to happen, it has, it has to happen. Eventually,
it will presumably happen one way or another. Elon Musk
(33:35):
could do a great service to the country by running
the political campaign necessary and by uh by running the
constitutional campaign necessary to get the reforms we need.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
I'm happy if he just gave me a free car. Yeah,
well that would help to Rob Niedlson.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
People want to get information, go to thinkfreedom dot org.
Do you do our and click on the constitution tab
Constitution tab this. This is fascinating. Hey, thank you so much,
Rob Nagelsen, Thank you, sir. I'm John Caldera back after this.
Speaker 2 (34:04):
Keep it here. Six point thirty khow.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
Seven one three eight two five five that's seven to
one three talk Elon Musk's America Party. It's it's too bad.
I wish the man luck. I've become more and more
of an Elon fan. The whole Doge experience should have
(34:36):
been an education for us.
Speaker 5 (34:38):
All that.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
That you're not going to trim government by little bits
here and little bits there. There is no incentive for
government to ever get more efficient. In fact, it's the
opposite way. Government is rewarded for inefficiency, government is rewarded
for failure.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
There are more forest fires, so.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
They give more money to the forest Department because they
did the lows e job, so they reward them. It
happens everywhere, in every part of government. The only way
to stop it is to stop the money. Here in
Colorado we do it with a Balanced Budget Amendment and
(35:29):
the Taxpayer Bill of Rights
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