Diane Roberts: Hey. What could possibly go wrong?

After careful study of the latest debate-cum-Beauty-Pageant-in-Hell, I have finally figured out what’s wrong with the Republican Party. They think real life is just like a movie.

A bad, cheap movie, possibly starring Chuck Norris.

Take Ted Cruz. Tuesday night he said (again) that he’d “carpet bomb” ISIL into oblivion and “find out if  “sand can glow in the dark.”

Aw, hell yeah! Except carpet bombing would kill hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Plus it’s a war crime. But the visuals would be awesome.

Donald Trump said that not only would he bomb ISIL, he’d “go after” the terrorists’ families and “take them out.”

Doesn’t Trump have “people” who can explain to him that murder is actually illegal, not to mention immoral? But hey, there I go being all wussified and weak, just like that Mecca-bowing Marxist in the White House.

Chuck Norris wouldn’t care. He’d waste ‘em all. Especially any who sneaked over the wall (paid for by Mexico) or infiltrated from Socialist Canada or otherwise violated a President Trump’s “No Muslims in ‘Merka” policy.

Ben Carson, who woke up in time to be asked how he feels about blowing up children in the Middle East mumbled something about cutting holes in kids’ heads to remove tumors and how they don’t like it at first but then they do and yes, he’s fine with killing whoever.

Then there’s Carly Fiorina. At the debate, she declared she’d “bring back the warrior class,” as if the Pentagon had been taken over by social workers.

Dressed in arterial red with a bishop-sized cross around her neck, Fiorina played Bette Davis playing Margaret Thatcher (use your imagination) as she accused Barack Obama of ditching top generals such as David Petraeus, Stanley McChrystal, John Keane and others because they told the president “things he didn’t want to hear.”

In the real world, Gen. Keane retired in 2003, six years before that Commie invaded the Oval Office. Gen. McChrystal and his minions dissed his Commander-in-Chief in front of a Rolling Stone reporter and so had to resign.

As for Gen. Petraeus, in 2011 Obama chose him to run the CIA. That didn’t work out because he showed classified material to his biographer with whom he was (ahem) having illicit sex.

Pro tip: You can get away with EITHER adultery OR carelessness with state secrets, but not both.

But in the GOP movie version of this, the general (played by Clint Eastwood) has sex with all his biographers plus every cute woman for miles around because he’s a Real Man, unlike Obama (played by Adam Sandler in blackface) who is gay. Or maybe a girl.

Marco Rubio — who plays himself in the movie, because who else could handle the part? — came under a sustained barrage from the Cruz Missile over immigration and who was more insanely conservative. John Kasich tried to get somebody to pay attention to him, promising to “punch Russia in the nose.”

And way, way over there in the corner, Jeb Bush tried to pick a fight with Trump, sniffing, “Donald, you’re not going to be able to insult your way to the presidency.”

Au contraire, preppy bilingual white boy! That’s precisely how somebody becomes president in the Republican movie: Our hero (or heroine — let’s not forget Carly, Slayer of Companies) lies, sneers, grandstands, and threatens his or her way all the way to the White House, cheered on by voters who have forgotten everything they ever heard about Civil Rights, Human Rights, and the Bill of Rights. It’s Morning in America again.

Unless it’s World War III.

Diane Roberts’s latest book is “Tribal: College Football and the Secret Heart of America.” She teaches at Florida State University.