Anyone who doesn’t think that Karl Rove is intertwined with the current “Trump-Muslim-Obama-Birther” controversy exploding amid the headlines today doesn’t know Rove.
Remember 2010 and Delaware Senate race Christine O’Donnell and the “witch/wiccan” religion controversy?  Yeah, Rove was Mike Castle’s campaign guy.  After Castle lost, Rove torpedoed O’Donnell -via media- on behalf of the GOPe.
Remember 2014 Matt Bevin Kentucky Senate race against Mitch McConnell and the “Chicken fight” speech.  Yup, Rovian again.  Here’s Rove today feeding the narrative:

[…]  But Rove had and has a plan for Cruz if he needs to use it.   Essentially the narrative to plant is to remind the media of Cruz’s “extremism”, and “polarizing” nature – the same thing the media did during the 2013 government shutdown which defined Cruz as a self-serving antagonist.
Using Cruz’s affiliation with Frank Gaffney – HERE and HERE Rove would essentially paint Cruz as “a birther” of sorts.  Along with Cruz’s affiliations with anti-gay activist David Lane HERE and then using Ted Cruz’s father Rafael Cruz as a negative –HERE– turning him into a religious fanatic and zealot – HERE.
Karl Rove is the master of using loose information to define a candidate  – we know him well – you can easily see how the media would gobble up these narratives; the production scripts almost write themselves.
This will play into the mind of the GOP primary voter who is swayed by the “we-must-have-a-candidate-who-can-win-the-general-election” crowd.  Rove only needs to seed to the media what the media already wants to sell.
Karl will probably drop this Cruz meme into the media bloodstream just after New Hampshire [’16], and then keep dripping “extremist/polarizing” chum in the water until after the South Carolina election, leading up to Super Tuesday.  It’s what he does best.  (link)

Rove is being paid to deliver an outcome.

This is the goal.  This is the only goal.  Delivering this result equals “Mission Accomplished“:

There is no goal beyond this goal.  This is the only goal.  The primary race is the only place their goal is at risk.  Once Clinton VS Bush is achieved all 2015/2016 goals and objectives have been fulfilled – both sides of the uniparty fully represented.
Both sides of this coin support:

♦ Common Core Federal Education Standards

♦ Continued Use of ObamaCare without Repeal

♦ Comprehensive Immigration Reform to Include Amnesty

♦ No Border Security – No biggie.

♦ The Trans-Pacific Trade Deal Must Be Passed

Wall Street, and as a consequence The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, K-Street, the RNC/DNC, and Mitch McConnell, consider those five items as the primary goals for this, and the next, administration.   Both the RNC and the DNC support this agenda.
Both Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush support those five primary legislative CoC issues.

THE UNI-PARTY

You can gnash your teeth, stomp your feet, cuss and yell – it matters not.  They don’t like you.  You can promise not to vote, they don’t care (actually not voting helps the plan).
There is only one way to defeat the plan – change one side of the coin.  They know you don’t like Jeb.  That’s why they changed the primary rules, primary dates, delegate distributions etc.  They’ve got all of that well thought out.
The way to defeat them is to overwhelm their PRIMARY mapping/splitting strategy.   You do that with MORE PRIMARY voters, not less.  Their goal thrives when people leave the party and become independents – that just blocks voters from closed primaries, they like that.
You defeat them IN THE PRIMARY with more voters, not less; and a candidate who can exit the primary drawing from both common sense sides and all common sense demographics.