Chief Twit and recently declared “Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator,” Elon Musk, has some advice for independents when they vote tomorrow: Vote Republican.
It’s not that he’s actually telling them to vote Republican (even though he will be.) He’s telling them that our government needs checks and balances – kinda like our Founding Fathers wanted.
The separation of powers.
Musk tweeted [1], “To independent-minded voters: Shared power curbs the worst excesses of both parties, therefore I recommend for a Republican Congress, given that the Presidency is Democratic.”
He went on to tweet, “Hardcore Democrats or Republicans never vote for the other side, so independent voters are the ones who actually decide who’s in charge!” And he also said, “Like most people in America, I agree with some of the Democrat and some of the Republican policies, but not all. However, if executive and legislative branches are dominated by *one* party, then we lose balance of power.”
James Madison said a similar thing as Musk in a different way, “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, or whether hereditary, self-appointed or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
John Adams said, “…power must never be trusted without a check.”
George Washington said, “The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power, by dividing and distributing it into different depositories, and constituting each the guardian of the public weal against invasions by the others, has been evinced by experiments ancient and modern, some of them in our country and under our own eyes.”
Thomas Paine said, “No country can be called free which is governed by an absolute power; and it matters not whether it be an absolute royal power or an absolute legislative power, as the consequences will be the same to the people.”
Author Garry Wills said, “Inefficiency is to be our safeguard against despotism.”
And the best quote you will read today, which has been attributed to Groucho Marx is, “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.”