The “it” is to spread lies about a previous election her hero lost, that person being of course Donald Trump, in the thumping applied to him by current President Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential showdown.

This time around, meaning now, Cleta sees illegal immigrants behind every tree, each with ballot in hand, all waiting for Nov. 5 when they will swarm into the polls and vote unanimously for Kamala Harris and once again steal the White House from Trump.

Yes, she either really believes that or is willing to sell the theory to eager buyers in the power structures in Washington, a place she allegedly abhors but cannot divorce or live without.

Many people have tried to figure out how this former liberal lawmaker from socialist dominated Norman, OK turned into a rightwing conspiracy theorist, Heritage Foundation sycophant and Trump toady. The answer is – and mine is as good or better than most speculators on the topic – the former Ms. Deatherage, now Mitchell, has an addiction she has never been able to cure since infected with it way back in 1980.

And it is embodied in a very simple word: Power.

Especially political power which she gained at a very young age when she became the first woman legislator in the country to chair any state’s appropriations committee.

I was a member and a sub-committee chair, later chair of the same full committee myself so I have some sense of the influence one can wield when controlling, even in a poor state like Oklahoma, billions of dollars. In effect the chairman is in charge of more real dollars than any banker, billionaire, oil tycoon or wealth inheritor and, frankly, Cleta loved it. She prioritized education, health care, infrastructure, mental health and, of course, the University of Oklahoma, located in the heart of her legislative district and later in both my House and Senate districts.

Then, due to a completely unrelated issue, her boss and appointing power, Speaker Dan Draper, was indicted, convicted and removed from the Legislature and the Cleta lost her funding perch, quit the Legislature, ran for lieutenant governor, got drubbed and at that point, I believe, she adopted an early, deep-seated and never totally satiated determination to “get even with government.” It was also at this time her husband, banker Dale Mitchell, was convicted of felonies and barred from his profession which obviously added to the anger, angst and urgency she already felt about life’s unfairness and the early end to what once was an incredibly promising and limitless climb up the political ladder.

There, dear readers, is my supposition, theory and close observation over decades of why Oklahoma’s most progressive, ERA-supporting, pro-abortion defending and liberal lawmaker has turned into one of DC’s most determined Trumpsters and conspiracy repeater and creator.

She has a brilliant mind, a wonderful education, speaking and written skills among the best I have ever observed, and she has, over the last 30 years, increasingly wasted them all in her never resolved loss of political power exactly 40 years ago this year.

Power corrupts and absolute power … well, as Paul Harvey would say, you know the rest of the story.