Was he splitting the GOPe vote?
In my experience, it is the right that tends to be so purist that they will split and let the left up the middle.
That said, I live in Ontario, where the far left often splinters so that the “Progressive Conservatives” can win a comfortable majority on the basis of a pathetic plurality
I was a district manager for the Conservative Party before I moved to the US when Harper became the PM. Eventually many years later, out of curiosity, attended a meeting around December in Vancouver, and they started talking like a bunch of Democraps. It was nauseating..