I actively entertain the hypothesis that Hearn (and now Andresen to some extent) are associated with the shadowy Conformal entity who has their own clean-slate implementation of the Bitcoin protocol 'btcd'. For a few months they were pushing pretty hard to have Bitcoin shift over to their implementation with the argument that it is 'better' in some ways (and I personally don't doubt that it is.) 'justusranvier' was most active in pushing it, but he seems to have disappeared from this forum.
If this hypothesis is basically valid then it would make a lot of sense for someone in Hearn's position to try to do as much damage to the 'satoshi-based' protocol support structures as possible on his way out the door.
Interesting... You may have noticed how, of the early/core developers, the most brown-nosing of perceived authority appear to be Hearn and Gavin... i.e. they are the most "conformal". These people cannot get their heads (or noses) out of the fatherly figure of the state, which cryptographic decentralization protocols like Bitcoin have emerged precisely to render technologically obsolete and irrelevant. Do you have a more developed theory or theoretical scenario of your hypothesis?
I think the explanation is far easier: Hearn's ego is much greater than his competence. This inevitably leads to rejection of his flawed and dangerous ideas, which in turn induces his ego-compensatory criticism of the entity that rejected his ideas. His ban is well deserved and should persist, because he has proven beyond doubt that he is unwilling to learn.
My hope is that both Hearn and Andresen will vanish entirely from the Core development team, because through their regulatory acquiescence and constant denial of the importance of privacy issues they represent a huge threat to Bitcoin as we know it. Apart from that, BIP101 is by far the worst blocksize-proposal out there, because despite coming from a "lead scientist" it totally lacks scientific scrutiny.
Also very possible, yes, but how do you explain Gavin?