Usually, trying to keep up with facts leaves me no time to contemplate theories. Not that I have anything against theories, as long as we are careful to distinguish between fact and theory. However, sometimes a question arises on its own and persists. This is one of those times.

Obviously, oppo research was responsible for this series of October surprises, from an eleven-year old outtake about Trump's unwelcome kissing and groping to a claim by a victim of having been groped by Trump on a plane thirty-five years ago. I have zero problem with any of that. Oppo research is SOP in political campaigns and every nominee in a general Presidential election campaign.dreams of an October surprise that media will blare on a loop.

However, we did have a rather long (it seemed) Republican primary with about twenty Republican candidates, one of whom actually shares a surname and a considerable amount of DNA with Billy Bush! (I think! you know! the candidate! I mean!) That same candidate also has a lot of experience with Rovian tactics, having worked up close and personal with The Karl himself during more than one Presidential campaign. And said candidate had money up the yin yang to do oppo research, his own money, family money, big, big donor money, some say even Nazi money. And he was only one member of a laughably large Republican Presidential primary field. Day after day, Trump taunted them, insulted them, belittled them, providing plenty of motivation for retaliation by any or all of them.

It wasn't as though Trump's womanizing was unfathomable, either. Ditto the possibility of sexual assault. His public record with women shouts "horn dog." As many women can attest, horn dogs, especially those with power and wealth, often "overstep," to put it mildly. Moreover, his first wife's divorce papers, a public record any oppo team worth the name would have found and read, said he forced himself on her. Yet, not one of the Republican primary candidates' oppo teams came up with any of this info now being aired. So, how is this coming out only now? Why didn't one or more primary candidates knock Trump out of the primary? Am I the only one surprised by the apparent laxity of every Republican primary candidate's oppo research?

As far as the women: I believe them. I feel very bad for them. I feel awful that any of this happened to them in the first instance. However, I feel they are being used again. This is not like one woman after another spontaneously finding her power and her voice to accuse Cosby for her own sake. This is Trump and Hillary digging into the past to find these women and persuade them to speak out publicly, whether again, or for the first time, for the benefit of Trump or Hillary. Something about that seems wrong to me.

In any event, this Presidential campaign is the worst of my life in so many ways that I can only once again curse the duopoly that is fast morphing into a monopoly.