Everybody has to believe in a least one crank conspiracy theory. Here's mine:

Before President Carter appeared on the scene, Reagan was in the political wilderness. The mainstream considered him a far right reactionary. His election as governor of California was seen as an embarrassing fluke. Reagan was regarded as a bad joke with his political career over.

That was the situation before Carter's presidency. Unfortunately, among President Carter's lesser sins, Carter did three things that seriously pissed off the military industrial complex:

1) Carter cancelled the B-1 bomber.
2) Carter was concillatory towards the Soviet Union.
3) Carter seriously screwed up supporting the Shah of Iran (a major foreign purchaser of American armaments).

The military industrial complex had lost hundreds of billions of dollars due to Carter and they were not going to tolerate another 4 years of him. They then searched the political landscape and found their perfect instrument, Ronald Reagan. They then approached Reagan's handlers (Edwin Meese) and made the following offer:

If you promise to significantly increase federal funding towards armaments programs including reactivation of the B-1, we will insure the people blocking your advancement within the Republican Party will be diverted. We will provide you with all necessary funding through multiple untraceable sources. We will connect you with the best and brightest people who will insure your election. We will also exercise our contacts within the Intelligence Community at an unofficial level to insure that all opportunities are made available to you.

Carter's bungling guaranteed the next president would be Republican. However Reagan's Faustian bargain guaranteed the next Republican president was himself. After being elected, Reagan paid back the military industrial complex far beyond their wildest hopes. So much so that the Soviet Union paniced at the prospect of an accellerated arms race and consequently imploded. This of course brought about the ultimate irony: With the Soviet Union gone, the greatest threat to America was its own military industrial complex. The massive cut backs in military spending and base closures were the logical consequence.

This conspiracy theory of course is complete and utter nonsense and not worth the effort of refuting.

Gary