Sometimes you’ve got to “get down in the mud with the fucking elephants.”

Sometimes you don’t.

The Michigan primary race is one of the latter.

On Feb. 15, 2012, DailyKos.com founder Markos Moulitsas Zúniga launched “Operation Hilarity,” a grassroots, web-based political campaign that encourages Democrats to vote for Rick Santorum in states such as Michigan, whose open primaries allow crossover voting.

The goal of Operation Hilarity: To “keep the GOP clown show going!” by boosting Santorum’s support, denying presumed nominee Mitt Romney key victories, and dragging out a nomination fight that has already done immeasurable harm to the Republican Party while simultaneously boosting President Obama’s re-election odds.

The result of Operation Hilarity: Democrats looking like Republicans for trying to rig an election.

A utilitarian, or consequentialist, would say the ends justify the means—that it is acceptable to gag your conscience in the short-term in order to bring about some greater good in the long-term.

A Kantian would say any action, specifically a “hypothetical” imperative, cannot be judged logically or morally by its outcome alone; that only categorical imperatives matter, where one’s actions are judged as moral not solely on the outcome, but on the whether the action can be viewed as a universally binding code of conduct applicable to all people in all situations.

In other words, if you would cry foul if a Republican tried to rig a Democratic election, you can’t claim any moral high ground as a Democrat by doing the same thing in a Republican election.

From the perspective of a bare-knuckle political strategist, Operation Hilarity is a gem.

Michigan is Romney’s home state, and losing it to a right-wing dominionist would be devastating to Romney’s candidacy. Failing to garner the support of constituents in your own state is the ultimate rejection; one that would haunt Romney long after the primary race. And so, anything Democrats could do to bring about that end would be worthwhile, particularly because Santorum would be much easier for Obama to beat in the general election.

“The best way to think about it,” one DailyKos contributor explained in a Feb. 22, 2012, post titled “Defending Operation Hilarity,” “is with a hypothetical.”

If you knew with perfect certainty that if one Republican candidate was nominated, President Obama would clearly be victorious and if another was nominated, the odds would be closer to
50-50, would you be willing to vote in open primary to guarantee an Obama victory?”

This is a good point. But it’s a bad rhetorical tool.

Here is another hypothetical:

If you knew with perfect certainty that if Republican turnout was low, President Obama would clearly be victorious, and if it was high the odds would be closer to 50-50, would you be willing to call in a bomb threat to voting facilities in predominantly Republican precincts in order to guarantee an Obama victory?

I’m not saying Operation Hilarity is a domestic terrorist movement. My point is that an if/then argument cannot be retrospectively validated as moral or “fair” (even as an act of retribution), just because it leads to a satisfactory, if partisan, outcome.

In “Rules for Radicals,” Saul Alinsky argues that “the perennial question” is whether or not the means justify the ends in political organization. Such a question is meaningless, he states: “The real and only question regarding the ethics of means and ends is, and always has been, ‘Does this particular end justify this particular means?”

No Kantian by any stretch of the imagination, Alinsky learned over time that if you cannot achieve success with what you’ve got, you’ve got to lower your standards.

Still, he tells the story that during a fight with a corporation, a minor executive brought to him a briefcase full of “proof” that the leader of the opposition “prefers boys to girls”—an unrelated but nonetheless significant bit of information that could have destroyed Alinsky’s opponent.

I said, “Thanks, but forget it. I don’t fight that way. …To me, dragging a person’s private life into this much is loathsome and nauseous.” He left. So far, so noble; but, if I had been convinced that the only way we could win was to use it, then without any reservations I would have used it. What was my alternative? To draw myself up into righteous “moral” indignation saying, “I would rather lose than corrupt my principles,” and then go home with my ethical hymen intact?

I’m not morally or intellectually or philosophically superior to the progressives who believe Operation Humility is a sure-fire way to damage the one Republican candidate who has a chance at beating Barack Obama in November. I agree with them, and I admire their political strategizing. I just don’t think it’s necessary in this particular case.

Republicans are already disenchanted by their options. Voter turnout in almost every primary state thus far has been well below expectations. There is no clear frontrunner in the race, and it is unlikely that a nominee will be chosen before the party’s convention in August. More importantly, Obama is a campaign juggernaut who will slaughter whomever challenges him in November.

Moulitsas admits the Republican primary race is a “clown show” already. The Michigan race is expected to be “razor thin” even without Democrats “meddling” in it, and “anything less than a resounding performance by Romney here would taint the achievement”; a “resounding performance” by Romney is unlikely given the small margin of victory pollsters are projecting, so the race will be deflating for his candidacy whether he wins or not. How much he wins by won’t matter. And furthermore, Santorum very well may pull off the Michigan primary without the help of Democrats.

All of that is to say, Why interfere at all?

Citing “Operation Chaos,” a voting drive started by Rush Limbaugh that encouraged Republicans to re-register as Democrats and vote for Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Democratic Party so as to draw out the nomination and  “weaken the eventual nominee,” Kos argues for a tit-for-tat counterattack:

Rush Limbaugh and his ilk have had no problem meddling in our own contests. And if there’s one thing Daily Kos is about, it’s about fighting fire with fire.

There are times when you have to get down in the mud with the elephants. But when you do, you get dirty. And when you’re drenched in the same filth as your opponent, you become indistinguishable, politically and morally, from the foe you’re trying to defeat.

The problem is, fighting fire with fire only creates a bigger fire. And our democratic process is the burn victim.

See also: Daily Kos’ “Operation Hilarity”—getting Dems to vote for Santorum—is a HUGE mistake from ABLC contributor Chris Savage; How Serious is the Democratic Crossover Vote Threat in Michigan? via Talking Points Memo; and Michigan: Inviting Crossover Voting? from The Wall Street Journal

(​Originally published at AngryBlackLady.com)