Leftists condemn Elon Musk for donating to GOP PAC
Tech visionary and entrepreneur Elon Musk has been "unmasked" as a secret GOP donor. Musk apparently contributed about $40 thousand to the Protect the House PAC.
Predictably, the left has gone ballistic. Musk is Silicon Valley. That makes him one of us. How dare he go off the reservation and contribute to the enemy?
Tesla CEO Elon Musk reportedly donated nearly $40,000 to a Republican political action committee, becoming one of their top 50 donors last quarter, The Hill reported Saturday.
The Federal Election Commission filingshows Musk donated $38,900 to the Protect the House PAC, a committee dedicated to keeping Republicans in control of Congress, The Hill reported.
According to Salon, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and Houston Texans owner Robert McNair were also donators, bringing the group’s second quarter earnings to more than $8 million.
Musk has donated to many candidates from both parties in the past including Hilary Clinton in both of her presidential campaigns.
In truth, Musk is an odd duck politically speaking. He calls himself a socialist, but with a twist:
"By the way, I am actually a socialist," he tweeted. "Just not the kind that shifts resources from most productive to least productive, pretending to do good, while actually causing harm. True socialism seeks greatest good for all."
This is actually more of a communitarian philosophy, rather than socialist ideology. Radical communitarians can be socialists but generally speaking, there is room for free market capitalism (heavily regulated to ensure "fairness") in a communitarian society.
It hardly matters to leftists who bemoan Musk's "betrayal":
Nice to know the person responsible for making electric cars is able to divorce himself from climate change by donating to the very people who deny its existence. I traded my Tesla in last week after my friend’s Tesla caught on fire, so I saved a trip https://t.co/rDqiERd8qt
— Chelsea Handler (@chelseahandler) July 14, 2018
Nate Silver has a list of Musk donations since 2010. They include plenty of money given to Democrats, including Hillary Clinton's campaigns for president as well as some to Republicans.
Here (per OpenSecrets) are Musk's donations since late 2010, not counting his most recent contribution which doesn't yet show up in their data. There are donations here to Hillary, Obama, the DCCC and DSCC, etc. But also donations to lots of Republican candidates and PACs. pic.twitter.com/mWBpTtYJvs
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) July 14, 2018
This is SOP for the rich, who tend to hedge their bets by donating to both parties. But in this rabidly partisan age, we see more and more pushback from the left when their "clients" don't do as they're told.