What is going on in recent days with the Republican Party and its adherents who still proclaim to be “conservative” reminds me terribly of the events of John Carpenter’s The Thing. The men of Antarctic base Outpost 31 in that movie grow increasingly paranoid, even violent toward each other. As Wilford Brimley’s character tells MacReady (Kurt Russell) at one point: “I don’t know who to trust.”

I don’t think the Republicans have been infiltrated by aliens just yet (as happens in another John Carpenter movie, They Live) but ever since this past weekend’s annual Conservative Political Action Conference you would think that the party is divvying up and preparing to go at it with flamethrowers and fire axes. But I think that the “mainstream press” (now more worthless than ever) is missing the real story here. This power struggle among so-called “conservatives” is only happening because the Republicans ...