As the midterm election cycle grinds onward, Republicans are flinging one attack after another at voters, hoping something will rescue their worsening chances of keeping their congressional majorities. The strategy looks less like confidence than a frantic search for any message that might stick.

Their attacks on transgender people have fallen flat despite blanketing the airwaves. Voters are far more concerned about their finances than an issue affecting 0.002% of the population, leaving Republicans without the political payoff they apparently expected.

The party has also tried reviving a red scare, but that effort has failed to gain traction. Polls show that voters in 2026 agree more with what Republicans call socialism than with President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement.

Now Trump’s super PAC is testing another villain, and the choice is almost comically unthreatening. The group is attempting to transform former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg into a frightening radical who can be used against Democratic candidates.

The experiment is unfolding in North Carolina’s 11th District, a Republican held seat that Trump carried by nearly 10 points. Trump’s political action committee is running an advertisement connecting Democratic nominee Jamie Ager with Buttigieg.

The advertisement says Ager is “campaigning with radicals like Pete Buttigieg.” Calling Buttigieg radical is quite a stretch, given that the former transportation secretary is presented as a mild mannered Midwesterner rather than a political fire breather.

The numbers make the attack look even stranger. Buttigieg has a higher favorability rating than Trump, while one third of the population does not even know who he is, making the attempt to cast him as a national menace a serious head scratcher.

Still, Trump appears fixated on Buttigieg. Over the weekend, he posted on Truth Social to boast that he had repealed an electric vehicle standard approved by Buttigieg while he served in former President Joe Biden’s administration.

Trump used the occasion to deploy his nickname for Buttigieg and celebrate the reversal. As usual, the message arrived with random capitalization, sweeping accusations and enough volume to substitute for anything resembling restraint.

“BIG DAY FOR AMERICAN AUTO WORKERS AND CAR BUYERS! I have just approved new Fuel Economy Standards that TERMINATE Sleepy Joe Biden and Pete Boot-EDGE-EDGE’s ridiculous EV Mandate,” Trump wrote, using his lame nickname for Buttigieg. “The Dumocrats cost our Great Auto Manufacturers $Billions, forced Americans into cars they never wanted, and wasted Billions on Chargers that were never built.”

The standards repealed by Trump would have required automakers to manufacture more electric vehicles to meet emissions requirements. The repeal also comes as rising gas prices have become a major political problem for Republicans during the election cycle.

There is a thick layer of irony here. If more Americans drove electric vehicles, the sharp increase in gas prices attributed to Trump’s war in Iran would have had less impact on Republicans during these elections.

The political circumstances also explain why a Trump PAC is spending money attacking Buttigieg in a district that should be strongly Republican. Trump’s war and the corresponding rise in gas prices have helped put seats such as North Carolina’s 11th District into play.

Last week, the Cook Political Report moved the contest into its toss up column. That was a startling shift for a seat Republicans would be expected to hold easily in a neutral political environment, and it signals just how grim the landscape has become for the party.

Against that backdrop, the Buttigieg attack looks less like an effective strategy than another desperate throw at the wall. If Republicans are relying on advertisements portraying Pete Buttigieg as a terrifying radical to preserve their majority, the party may be even more cooked than it already appears.