I mean, I want to believe it's someone trapped in the party signalling distress but I'm sure it's just incompetence

American Conservatives are all about smelling the royal diaper (because kissing the royal pinkie ring is so 18th century). The inverted flag is just their way of doing that from afar. Whatever the opposite of virtue signaling is: It's that. Corruption signaling? Debasement? Vice? Hypocrisy?