It’s been a little over one week since North Korea tested a nuclear weapon of its own device, and two days since the United States confirmed that the test, while possibly a dud, did actually occur. But dud or no dud, the political clout the test carries is staggering—what this means for the rest of the world is a nuclear-armed country with not much to lose, and one with a long history of deft and daring (and much more dangerous) political maneuvering to gain the world’s attention.

But last week, FOX News viewers got a different perspective. What Americans may have heard is North Korea is testing nuclear bombs because they want to destroy Republican chances in the mid-term elections, now just three weeks away.

The idea came most recently from an episode of the Bill O’Reilly show, a day after the underground nuclear explosion. In his talking points memo, O’Reilly told viewers, “Now, the reason that North Korea is causing trouble is that it wants to influence the November election, as we discussed last week. Iran is doing the same thing in Iraq, ramping up the violence so that Americans will turn against the Bush Administration. This is not a partisan statement—it is a fact.” Non-partisan? A Fact?

Let’s take that at face value: let’s assume it is a fact. Aside from the obvious attempt to present Iran and Iraq as one and the same entity (conservative commentators have been pretty successful at pushing the idea that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were brothers-in-arms, and it isn’t absurd to say that a good percentage of Americans still believe this), that would mean what countries like North Korea and Iran/Iraq really want is to install a Democratic government; to turn the tide against the Republicans who’ve been so successful at creating a generation of new terrorists and nascent America-haters.