FEED spoiler party!

One thing I've been wondering about -- why the Ryman ranch? Easly made sense -- either to kill Tate's major primary opponent or to discredit him as being 'soft on defense'. Trying to kill the journalists also, so that no one found out about Buffy, since she was obviously getting cold feet. (And because the others were poking around where they shouldn't, instead of being nice lapdogs for the campaign.)

But at the ranch, it was right before the RNC. It could get Ryman to bow out, but wasn't going to affect delegate votes, unlike if it had happened a week or two before. I'd bet all the pollsters would at least have an inkling which way things would fall, even if politics was more of a surprise in the post-Rising world. Furthermore, Tate mentioned he was in favor of loosening Mason's Law, so having a high profile animal conversion case would hurt this item of his agenda.

The guy was completely batguano. You expected logic?

Dude was round the bend if he didn't think anything of using weaponized KA. Crazy and Logic are not always riding the same train.

Ah, true, but I want to assume someone wasn't -- if not Tate, than whoever is giving him money and more samples of KA to mess around with. It's scarier when someone seems sane, but then can do something like that, getting a bunch of innocents, including a high school senior, killed to prove some point.

Two thoughts -
1. Maybe Tate's crew thought that the whole thing would blow up a bit faster and the shock might affect how things fell out at the convention.

2. I sort of had the feeling, that Tate was using the various incidents to drive Ryman to a more polarized, militarized stance.

That's true.

As I recall Tate’s villain confessional speech at the end indicated that he’d arranged the attack at the ranch in order to generate sympathy for Ryman and further his campaign.  He seemed to think what he was doing (at least after losing Super Tuesday) was to give Ryman the Presidency all the while manipulating him to his own ends from the VP position.

Okay. Maybe I was too much in shock from the holy crap, Georgia to pick that up.

Or it could have been the late hour. Because I couldn't sleep until I knew what happened. (Means I better re-read...)

I honestly think more about the reasoning for this will come out in the next two books. We know, now, that there's a conspiracy after all. (yay! conspiracies are awesome!) Also that it involves the government.

The way the army was right there to try to surpress what happened at the ranch. . . I think in this case, this was less about Tate and his agenda, and more about the larger agenda of the Illuminati!

My tentative thought is that the powers that be were pretty sure that Ryman would so not be interested in playing ball with him. Take out the ranch, (ideally) take out all three daughters, and you might manage to break Ryman, and have him drop out. Or it could break his wife, and he might drop out for her sake, or you could look forward to possible domestic scandal closer to the polls. Biggest thing, though...if you can surpress the whole 'act of terrorism' angle, then you have a large, publicity getting tragedy...that makes it look like Emily Ryman is criminally stupid for having the ranch at all, and Peter Ryman probably is too, for allowing/supporting it.