“The conspiracy minded might even leap to the conclusion that the Aurora incident might have been designed to mute that conservative message from gaining a populist foothold.”
I would not make that leap. Everything suggests that the gunman was just plain deranged.
To the contrary, the planning to keep himself from being harmed was meticulous and took place over a significant period of time. Everything from pre-loading his body on pain meds, using body armor, and throwing blinding and confusing tear gas, followed up with an immediate surrender when the police arrived, point to this being a deliberate mass murder/terrorism act by a sane, evil person who is pretending to be insane and who fully intended to live through the massacre.