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Mark Kelly’s Tesla has a broken virtue signal. His isn’t the only one. The Arizona senator, like many leftists, presumably bought the car to demonstrate his commitment to his party’s favorite pretext for spending taxpayer dollars: climate change.
But now that the company’s owner is in a public battle to end wasteful spending of those dollars, that virtue signal doesn’t work anymore.
Kelly triumphantly took to Elon Musk’s X app (formerly Twitter) to denounce his Tesla and brag about its replacement: a “good ole’ Chevy Tahoe” with a 15 mpg internal combustion engine. I guess saving the planet takes a backseat to saving the tax revenue streams that have been decimated by Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Five Tesla vehicles were set on fire and shot at in what police are investigating as a “targeted attack” at a local repair center in Las Vegas on Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (Hal Sparks via Storyful)
Democrats wanted to legislatively ban gas-powered vehicles and force people to drive electric cars. But since Musk created the most popular and viable electric vehicle, now it is vogue to buy a gas SUV.
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The Democrats and especially Kelly’s blatant hypocrisy hardly stands alone. It used to be that all good leftists wanted to drive Teslas. Now it seems all good leftists want to key your Tesla. Tesla owners, many of whom bought their vehicles before the virtue signal shift, have been the targets of intense persecution, vandalism and even violence in some cases.
It’s a sudden shift, but it’s not the first time Democrats have given Americans whiplash from a hard U-turn.
Remember the about-face in 2020 from pandemic lockdown mode to violent protest mode after the death of George Floyd? For months, the left had been adamant that we wear masks, social distance and stay home. They filled in skate parks with sand, closed beaches, prohibited boating, closed campgrounds and demanded outdoor masking.
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But then the left needed to capitalize on the Floyd situation. And suddenly, all of those rules went away. For a brief period – just long enough to incite national protests, Democrats slammed on the pandemic breaks and changed direction.
Principles go out the window when power is on the line.
Make no mistake – Elon Musk is threatening the power centers of the left. It’s why they’re now willing to abandon their hard line against internal combustion engines and persecute the erstwhile Tesla owners (some of whom probably bought the car in the hopes of saving the planet).
Meanwhile, an American company with ingenuity and capital creates the most valuable auto company in the world, employing 80,000 Americans, and Democrats like Kelly would sink it all to score a few cheap political points.
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Would they also have us reject the rest of Musk’s contributions to the world? The rockets that retrieve astronauts? The Neuralink breakthroughs that bring technology access to paralyzed individuals? The underground tunnels that can be built beneath existing cities? The payment app that is revolutionizing commerce? Internet access via satellite to enable Ukraine to fight Russia?
Democrats would have us reject innovation – for what? An uncertain fiscal future? A guarantee that they will always be able to stack the electoral deck in their own favor?
We have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to actually tackle our unsustainable budget trajectory, and Kelly and his ilk reject it outright. Do Democrats have a plan to balance the federal budget? In my experience, they can’t even admit the need to do so. They’ve never sought a budget that actually achieves balance.
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Their goal isn’t the progress of America or the world at large. It’s power. They should be characterized by their flailing, gnashing of teeth, and resisting everything that is remarkable and common sense in our private economy.
The pattern is clear. When they disagree, they turn to violence. It’s meant to intimidate, not win the political battle. They disagree with Elon Musk, they target emission-free vehicles. They disagree with the Supreme Court, they threaten the justices. They disagree with police, they destroy cities.
Kelly is the embodiment of everything commonsense Americans are coming to hate about the left. That the former astronaut could not even acknowledge the value of Musk’s SpaceX retrieving astronauts from an unexpected stay in space is revealing.
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I won’t be selling my Tesla. Or my F150 truck. But I will be cheering on Elon Musk and his legendary effort to root out the waste, fraud and abuse that leftists have tried so hard to protect.
For Democrats, it’s all about power and not about principle.
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