Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. And at least one political theory — utilitarianism — says it shouldn’t even be tried.
But Lord Almighty, the temptation is so great!
If you’re a strict utilitarian, you believe the fundamental purpose of the political process — all political processes — is to enhance the greater good. It matters more than party loyalty.
Therefore, if you’re a conservative utilitarian, you’d back the most conservative Republican candidate in the Republican primary — as well as the most conservative Democratic candidate in the Democratic primary. That way, whoever wins will be “better” for the American people.
And if you’re a liberal, simply swap “conservative” with “left-wing.” Same exact principle.
But that’s not how modern-day politics is played, of course. Instead, we put our thumbs on the scales with strategic gamesmanship: Conservative Republicans back the most conservative candidate in the GOP primary and then try to optimize his/her chances in November by “greasing the wheels” for the Democrats to nominate the weakest candidate possible. And vice versa, of course.
It’s utilitarianism mixed with strategic partisan pragmatism: Hey, you can’t achieve the greater good if you don’t first win the election — and the weaker your opponent, the more likely you’ll win.
And it’s worked before.
In 1998, Fred Tuttle — a 79-year-old retired farmer — ran for the GOP’s U.S. Senate nomination in Vermont. His motive? Tuttle was publicizing a low-budget independent movie called Man With a Plan, where he played a farmer running for Congress. His entire Senate campaign was a PR stunt; Tuttle only spent $251 on his candidacy.
The “serious” GOP Senate candidate was Jack McMullen, a wealthy businessman. He had the support of the Republican establishment, Republican donors, and Republican activists. For obvious reasons, McMullen was a heavy favorite.
But Tuttle won the primary when vast numbers of Democrats voted in Vermont’s open primary, capturing 54% of the vote. It was a yuuuuge upset.
And then Tuttle promptly endorsed Vermont’s incumbent Senator, Democrat Patrick Leahy, who cruised to victory!
Score one for the Donkeys: Putting their thumbs hooves on the GOP’s scales worked. Hey, can’t argue with success.
A decade later, the Republicans tried to flip the script: Rush Limbaugh sought to interfere in the Democrats’ 2008 presidential primaries with “Operation Chaos.”
From Radio and Television Business Report (May 8, 2008):
Limbaugh said the purpose of the Operation was not to support Clinton, but to drag out the battle between her and Obama, and he believes that in fact Obama is the weaker candidate. However, Limbaugh was also critical of the Republicans and their timidity. He said, “The Republican Party hasn’t the guts to do Operation Chaos. Were there no Operation Chaos, the Republican Party would not have a plan. But I am not affiliated with the Republican Party here…” [emphasis added]
Turned out that Barack Obama was actually a far stronger candidate than Hillary Clinton — and prolonging the Dem’s nomination fight gave the young, charismatic, media-savvy Obama millions of dollars in free publicity. D’oh!
Operation Chaos spectacularly backfired in two important ways:
- Instead of weakening Obama, sparring against Hillary elevated his national profile, sharpened his debate skills, forced him to build a nationwide political organization, and made him appear youthful, exciting, and likeable by contrast. (All of which paid dividends in the general election.)
- Since the GOP nominee — Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) — had locked up the top spot 91 days earlier, the mainstream media ignored him for the next three months. The never-ending Obama-Clinton nomination battle starved McCain of vital, brand-building exposure. And by the time the Dems settled on a nominee, Obama was already a household name, a global celebrity, and practically an American folk hero.
Like I said, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
It’s worth contemplating because the GOP is playing this dangerous game once again. If it hadn’t, radical leftist Abdul El-Sayed, who won the Democrats’ Senate nomination over Haley Stevens by less than one point, wouldn’t have even made the November ballot.
That’s because the Republicans were sitting on a treasure trove of opposition research, yet opted not to use it until AFTER El-Sayed was nominated.
How do we know this?
Simple: PR tactics unmask PR strategies.
From The Hill: El-Sayed Removed Controversial YouTube Clips Before Launching His Campaign
Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed once urged government officials to consider defunding the police amid a string of other progressive left-wing policies that he now says are no longer reflective of his political views.
Resurfaced videos from a YouTube podcast show El-Sayed suggesting that lawmakers replace the Second Amendment with a constitutional right to healthcare and encouraging the public to rethink the way it celebrates Independence Day in clips that are now deleted.
“Fireworks just aren’t worth it: hear us out” one deleted video from 2024 read, according to CNN’s KFile, which first reported the clips.
El-Sayed suggested that the loud noise from fireworks could trigger veterans that suffer from PTSD or endanger children and pets.
As CNN noted, “The video is one of several examples of El-Sayed removing past online content as he seeks elected office. …he also deleted social media posts supporting the 'defund the police' movement.”
Question for the peanut gallery: If El-Sayed removed these “controversial” YouTube clips and/or social media posts BEFORE launching his campaign, why the heck is this revelation only coming out AFTER he won the Senate nomination?
After all, it’s now old news. El-Sayed announced his candidacy on April 17, 2025. So if he deleted his old videos and posts BEFORE he ran, it must’ve happened over a year ago.
Why the heck are we hearing about it 16 months later?!
Most likely answer: Because this info didn’t come from Haley Stevens, anyone in the Democratic Party, or field research by those hardworking (lol) members of the mainstream media.
Sorry, boys and girls, but the timing is too on-the-nose. This has all the telltale signs of a GOP hit job.
And y’know what else we can assume?
The GOP is sitting on a LOT more dirt than this!
‘Cause if this was all we had, we wouldn’t be wasting our best ammo in early August. We would’ve done what Jason Miyares did in his Virginia attorney general race against John Jay — and released the damning news 30 days before the election.
But if you’re sitting on a mountain of opposition research, then it makes sense to dole ‘em out strategically. That means, yes, firing your biggest PR gun closer to the election — but also making sure you fire enough early salvos to brand a political newbie as an extremist wackaloon.
And that’s the PR strategy of Mike Rogers, El-Sayed’s Republican opponent.
He patiently waited for El-Sayed to win the nomination, and then immediately blasted him as a far-left weirdo. Rogers’ goal was to tar-and-feather him with his own words, strangling El-Sayed’s campaign in its infancy.
The Dems recognize the PR danger. That’s why El-Sayed’s campaign is pushing so hard in the opposite direction.
El-Sayed’s campaign said the old clips do not reflect his current views: “Abdul is the former captain of his high school football team, loves Michigan football on Saturdays, and celebrates the Fourth of July with fireworks like the next Michigander. Cherry-picked comments from old podcasts don’t reflect his beliefs today.”
But there’s oodles of damning content.
The YouTube videos, at least 100 of which appear to have been made private, are another example of how El-Sayed’s years as a prolific podcaster, commentator and social-media user have left behind an extensive record — some of it subsequently deleted — that Republicans could use to portray him as both ideologically left-wing and culturally out of step with swing-state voters.
[…]
Many of the removed videos on YouTube, where El-Sayed at the time had more than 17,000 subscribers, are not publicly available anymore, but CNN reviewed transcripts archived before the videos were made private.
El-Sayed’s fireworks video was briefly interrupted by a message noting that it was sponsored in part by the Marguerite Casey Foundation. In reading ads for the foundation on his “America Dissected” podcast, he highlighted what he called its “cutting-edge areas of scholarship,” including “feminist prison abolition.”
If Rogers is smart, he has a preset PR schedule to disseminate new info every few days or so. That way, it’s death by a thousand cuts — and the scandals never stop. There’s no time for recovery, no chance for a course correction.
For example, maybe four or five days after dropping the YouTube bomb, Rogers might expose El-Sayed’s “sacred” obligation to follow Sharia law:
Left-wing Michigan Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed told the New York Times in 2009 that he has a “sacred” obligation to follow Sharia law in every aspect of his life until the day he dies. pic.twitter.com/C3AdhB0VEC
— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) August 12, 2026
At a CAIR event in 2022, Abdul El-Sayed openly defended Sharia Law in the United States.
— Senate Republicans (@NRSC) August 10, 2026
El-Sayed has taken over $115,000 from the foreign terrorist organization CAIR — including from his father-in-law who serves on the CAIR-Michigan board. pic.twitter.com/FwTEQKIzNS
Because that’s absolutely not how El-Sayed wants to brand himself. On his campaign website, his first two sentences cast him as a reluctant hero — a compassionate, trustworthy doctor who realized that America’s political system was the source of sickness and despair, and golly gee, decided to do something about it:
Abdul El-Sayed wasn’t supposed to be a politician.
He studied to be a doctor — but realized it was our broken politics that was making people sick.
“C’mon, Abdul is an all-American medical doctor who loves Michigan football, fireworks, and the 4th of July! That’s not so scary!”
But when you pull back the curtain, not everything is what it seems:
Abdul El-Sayed has never practiced medicine as a licensed physician.
— Jordan Schachtel (@JordanSchachtel) August 11, 2026
He did not complete a residency, pass board exams, or obtain a medical license.
Absolute third world fraud. Photo is from a campaign ad. pic.twitter.com/LmsdZQGWQR
If Rogers’ campaign is unloading these big bombs so early, I’m dying to know what juicy morsels they’ve earmarked for the final 30 days of the campaign. I’m guessing it’s something REALLY good. Otherwise, Rogers’ PR strategy wouldn’t make sense.
But it’s still VERY high risk.
Related: The Cunning Genius of AOC’s ‘Woke’ Reboot
Michigan hasn’t elected a Republican to the U.S. Senate since Spencer Abraham in 1994. That was over 30 years ago.
Which means, El-Sayed still has an excellent chance at winning — because ANY Democrat with a pulse has an excellent chance at winning.
Yes, Donald Trump won in Michigan (two times: 2016 and 2024), but he’s also the only Republican presidential candidate to win there since the end of the 1980s. Bill Clinton won twice, as did Barack Obama. Joe Biden, John Kerry, and Al Gore won once.
Serial scandals or not, Michigan is foreboding terrain for Republicans. It’s more blue than red.
Maybe Mike Rogers will buck the tide. Maybe he’s sitting on a mountain of opposition research. Maybe Abdul El-Sayed is so extreme and so radical, he’s the only Democrat that a Republican like Mike Rogers could defeat in 2026 — and if Haley Stevens had won the nomination, she’d be a stone-cold lock to be Michigan’s next Senator. Maybe, by keeping his powder dry, Rogers has “greased the wheels” for a political contest against the weakest, most vulnerable Democrat imaginable. Maybe this was the PR masterstroke that’ll keep the Senate in Republican hands.
Or maybe we’ll wake up in November and rue the day we didn’t stop El-Sayed before the nomination, back when we still could.
One Last Thing: 2026 will reach a crescendo with the midterm elections. Nothing less than the future of our country teeters in the balance.
Never before have the political battle lines been so clearly defined. Blue wave or red wall, one way or another the 2026 midterms will transform our country.
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