WASHINGTON—After months of speculation and confusion, a Republican Party spokeswoman informed the press yesterday that members of the party had accidentally pressed its self-destruct button, which explained the recent party fractures.

What happened, according to spokeswoman Elaine Lee, was that the primary presidential candidates had been in a room together, so crowded that they jostled each other, bumping into the aforementioned button. Immediately, an alarm went off, notifying the group of the impending doom. The button, according to Lee, was designed so that the actual self-destruction would take a little more than a year and a half to occur, allowing disablement should it accidentally be pressed.

Most candidates and party leaders attempted to disconnect the button, but a leak in the explosive mechanism caused anyone who approached the button to suddenly subscribe to their most radicalized social-conservative values and lose their facilities of compromise, causing a rapid de-prioritization of the button itself.

Hours after the announcement, though they had apparently taken an oath of silence on the issue, the candidates released their own statements. Mitt Romney acknowledge the complexity of the situation. “It’s a tricky thing,” he said. “We need the consensus of the rest of the party to turn the button off, but it is with greatest confidence that I say that this will happen. Eventually.”

Newt Gingrich, whose exposure to the social conservative leak was reported to have reacted negatively with his defensiveness, blamed the press. “Maybe if the liberals of the mainstream media hadn’t been backing us all into the corner the entire time, this could have been prevented,” he said.

Ron Paul, on the other hand, who had been across the room reading an economics textbook when the button was pressed, expressed his frustration at the situation. “Well, maybe if we didn’t have a self-destruct button in the first place, this wouldn’t have even happened,” he said.

Republicans all across the country called for their leaders to disconnect the button immediately, but Democrats everywhere rejoiced at their sudden good fortune. “I can only say I am pleased that this did not happen to the Democratic Party,” Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said. “And why would it? Our own self-destruct button is so buried underneath the federal deficit that we couldn’t even get to it anyway. This definitely says something about our party’s superior maneuverability.”