What a bipartisan group of legislators hammered out over months, Elon Musk destroyed with a tweet.
Or rather, with dozens of posts on his social media site X, sent at a furious pace over the course of 12 hours last week. In post after post, Musk hammered at the budget deal with a flurry of false claims and threats of electoral retribution against any Republican who dared support the legislation brokered to prevent a government shutdown. And it worked. Republican lawmakers turned on the bill, citing overwhelming pressure from constituents spurred on by Musk’s posts. “My phone was ringing off the hook,” Republican Rep. Andy Barr told The Associated Press. “The people who elected us are listening to Elon Musk.”
The specter of voters whipped into a frenzy by an outsider with a megaphone should feel familiar for Republican politicians. For three decades, right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh bent the party to his will by dangling the threat of his millions of loyal listeners — and reliable voters — over their heads. As Musk tests the power of X to discipline Republican lawmakers, he is also testing whether he can replicate Limbaugh’s singular influence over the GOP — and whether he can use his power to both amplify Donald Trump’s political will and assert his own as well.
When Limbaugh broke with party leaders, his words cut a path of chaos and destruction through Congress.
Early in his days as a nationally syndicated radio host, Limbaugh showed the power of the microphone over the power of the purse. “The Rush Limbaugh Show,” which began to air across the country in 1988, transformed both talk radio and political communication. He quickly built an audience of millions of devoted listeners who waited on hold for hours just for the chance to talk to Limbaugh on air. By 1992, he had two bestselling books, a nightly television show in the works, and the ear of the president of the United States.
President George H.W. Bush, locked in a tough re-election campaign that year, had come to see Limbaugh as a sort of base-whisperer. Even after eight years as Ronald Reagan’s vice president and four years as president, Bush had never won over right-wing Republicans, who flocked to right-wing populist Pat Buchanan during the 1992 Republican primaries. Limbaugh, who had supported Buchanan over Bush, received a personal invitation from the president to spend a night at the White House, an evening Bush used to try to woo the radio host. Limbaugh readily agreed, piling praise on Bush in the closing months of the campaign.
Limbaugh failed to translate his support into electoral success — Buchanan lost the primary, Bush lost the election — but his prominence during the campaign elevated him as a power player in national politics. Two years later, when Republican politicians sought to kill an anti-lobbying bill, they asked Limbaugh to attack the bill and the Republicans who supported it. Limbaugh did; the bill died.
Republican lawmakers continued to partner with Limbaugh over the coming decades, seeing him as both a powerful ally and a potential threat. After all, they could encourage his efforts but not control them, and when Limbaugh broke with party leaders, his words cut a path of chaos and destruction through Congress. This often came in the form of listeners overloading congressional switchboards with phone calls and emails, on issues from immigration to health care. Whether Republicans were cowed by the calls or just used them as cover to break with party leaders wasn’t always clear. But each episode helped secure Limbaugh’s legacy as a bill killer.
Limbaugh had the power to destroy but not create, something Musk is beginning to learn about his own posting politics. Hours into Musk’s online tirade, Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance joined in, pressuring Republicans to oppose the deal. They did, scuttling the bipartisan agreement and substituting a Musk-Trump alternative that went up for a vote the next day. That bill, too, failed. A government shutdown was only avoided with hours to spare — and without a debt ceiling hike, Trump’s chief demand. The other major difference between the two men: the Trump factor. Musk does diverge from Limbaugh in important ways. While the radio host built his audience, Musk bought his. He may be able to amplify a message, but there’s no evidence that he can build a political movement. He does, however, have something Limbaugh didn’t: billions of dollars to burn. Limbaugh could only bully politicians; Musk can buy them. The other major difference between the two men: the Trump factor. Since Reagan left the White House, no Republican politician had found a way to build a worshipful following. That created a vacuum for Limbaugh to fill. In 2009, conservative magazine National Review even dubbed Limbaugh the “Leader of the Opposition,” even though the party had two actual opposition leaders, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, in Congress. But Trump filled that power void. Which means if Musk wants to be more than Trump’s ventriloquist, he would have to go up against someone who has an audience of millions, a net worth of billions, and the power of the U.S. federal government at his command. But Trump will not be in power forever. One of the keys to Limbaugh’s success was his longevity: His influence stretched across five presidential administrations. The second Trump administration may not be the apex of Musk’s political influence but just the beginning. And so Republican legislators may want to think twice before handing their power over to an antidemocratic and unpredictable billionaire. Though given their track record on that front, Musk may not have much to worry about.
Nicole Hemmer
Nicole Hemmer is an associate professor of history at Vanderbilt University and author of "Partisans: The Conservative Revolutionaries Who Remade American Politics in the 1990s." 
