I've often felt, and said so at the time, that conservative right-winger Pat Buchanan's move from the Republican party to the Reform Party for the 2000 presidential election was a three-part hidden agenda: 1) Get the public financing that had grown to spread his conservative rhetoric; 2) Make Bush look 'compassionate' and 'moderate'; and most importantly, 3) destroy the Reform Party (which had in many ways hurt the senior Bush's reelection bid in 1992). I see from the linked article, that all three now have come to pass.