Do Any of the Republicans Running for President Actually Want to Win?

Donald Trump has responded to falling poll numbers in Iowa by insulting Iowans, Bobby Jindal has reminded voters that he exists by refusing to participate in the second-tier GOP debate, Ben Carson can’t shut up about Nazis, and Jeb Bush has done the political equivalent of sticking his thumb up his butt and strumming his lips like a cartoon cat with a head injury. Do any of these guys want to actually win? My half-baked theory: no. None of them actually want to win. And this entire election makes a lot more sense if you think of it like a political sequel for The Producers.

Mel Brooks’s 1967 farce-musical tells the story of a pair of down-on-their-luck men who realize that they can make more money producing a musical that’s a flop than they can producing one that succeeds. Money raised by backers, reason Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom (as played by Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder), will make them rich, and if the show closes after only a night, they get to keep all of the money themselves rather than paying investors their share of profits. To maximize its offensiveness, they hire a Nazi to write it, the worst director on Broadway to direct it, and an semi-lucid man to star in it. Much to their horror, Springtime for Hitler is a smash hit.

Attempting an identical scheme with the presidency of the United States sounds like something so cynical that it’s unfathomable that a single man would attempt it, much less more than a dozen men (and one woman). But, in examining the bumbling of each of the candidates for the GOP nomination for President, it’s hard to imagine that anything but a mass dive is happening. How else could this many people with this many years of experience be so bad at doing the one thing that they’re supposed to be good at doing? It’s like watching a full lineup of major league baseball players strike out at tee-ball. It’s like watching Ronda Rousey lose a fight to a member of One Direction.

Jeb Bush, preordained moderate and reasonable choice for establishment Republican voters, is running the campaign of a man who cannot believe he has to suffer the indignity of the primaries and is responding to his frustration by throwing a tantrum. Don’t we know who his father is?! Fine, fuck it: Super Girl is hot. Psych majors work at Chik-fil-A. Shootings count among “stuff” that happens. Let’s fight with Donald Trump on Twitter. Why not. If I can’t jump the line I’ll stand here lighting my farts on fire until you guys nominate someone else.

Ben Carson has suspended public campaign events in the weeks leading up to this Wednesday’s debate in order to promote his book (a purpose the Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin seems to believe was the point of Carson’s campaign all along; a very Brooks-ian theory indeed). Carson took time away from his his campaign for Bestseller-In-Chief on Sunday to sit down with NBC’s Chuck Todd, who pointed out that Carson loves to bring up Nazis in expressly non-Nazi contexts. Carson responded that it’s the media’s fault, and that Jews love him, Jews absolutely love him. Same.