No Harm Spilt

I am not generally given to conspiracy theories, but the current state of the Republican Party cries out for an explanation, and it’s hard to come up with one that doesn’t involve some sort of conspiracy. How can you explain the odd behaviour of the following four GOP presidential candidates?

1. Donald Trump, the front-runner, insults Hispanics, women, and at least one American war hero who was captured and tortured by the enemy, thereby alienating minorities, women, and all normal people, a fairly significant part of the electorate.
2. Ben Carson, who seems to be gaining on Trump, is a neurosurgeon who openly states his belief that Darwin was led to the theory of evolution by Satan, thereby alarming and probably alienating the six percent of scientists who still identify as Republicans.
3. Ted Cruz, a Tea Party favourite, wants nothing more than to shut the government down and possibly to ensure that his is the most likely face to be featured as a Halloween mask.
4. Jeb Bush, the favoured establishment candidate, appears to be doing a Mr. Rogers impersonation, thus appealing most to that part of the population that is too young to vote.

Are these four in cahoots? Are they trying to make sure that once Marco Rubio does secure the nomination, he won’t have the proverbial snowball’s chance in Hell of winning the national election?

Then consider the Benghazi Hearing, supposedly a Republican attempt to damage Hillary Clinton’s image. Ask you self the following question: Given the influence of Cold War movies on American popular culture, which of the following will most Americans be sympathetic to?

1. A woman being interrogated by the KGB
2. The KGB interrogators

After watching even snippets of the eleven hours Hillary Clinton was yelled at and badgered by the Republican members of the Benghazi hearing, a sizable number of Americans will not only vote for Clinton; they will want the CIA to take out the Republican members of the Benghazi Committee.

So there are two possibilities:

1. Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, and Jeb Bush really do believe they have the best strategies for securing the nomination and winning the election, and the Republican members of the Benghazi Committee really do think that relentlessly badgering a woman on national television is a good way to make people hate her, not them.
2. Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, and Jeb Bush, and key Republican members of the Benghazi Committee are all part of an insidious conspiracy to destroy the Republican Party once and for all.

What about the Republican primary voters who have put Trump and Carson in the lead and have egged the Benghazi Committee on? Are they real, or are they part of the conspiracy? Have Democrats, or some group to the left of the Democrats, infiltrated the Republican Party in order to destroy it?

Here’s my theory: I believe that McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008, her subsequent celebrity status with Republican voters, and the emergence of the Tea Party as a real force in Republican politics greatly alarmed the powers that be in the Republican Party. They feared that any nominee they put forward would have to move so far to the lunatic right that he or she could never win a general election, and Romney’s defeat confirmed their fears. The Republican establishment decided they had to go all out, completely destroy the party, and start over from scratch. They approached Trump, who has hired strategists to choreograph the whole thing. Hillary Clinton will be the next President, and that will be the end of the Tea Party and the so-called Freedom Caucus.  By 2020 a new Republican Party will be born, and everything will be back to normal.