2/12: No Truthers Allowed

Conservative bloggers have been nothing if not supportive of the Tea Party Movement, but in the past 24 hours they've been blasting Tea Party-backed TX GOV candidate Debra Medina (R) for telling Glenn Beck that she doesn't have a position on the theory that the U.S. gov't was involved in the 9/11 attacks. Righty bloggers had paid little attention to Medina until now, as most of them were focused on the two leading candidates, incumbent Gov. Rick Perry (R) and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R). But after a recent Rasmussen poll showed Medina gaining on her rivals, the rightroots began to take notice. Unfortunately for Medina, it appears that the conservative blogosphere has written her off just as her candidacy was gaining momentum. Jim Geraghty quips: "Sometimes little-known candidates are little-known for a reason." Ed Morrissey declares: "Any candidate who thinks that a nutcase conspiracy theory about the US government destroying the WTC is within the realm of reasonable speculation is a candidate that richly deserves the obscurity she will shortly enter." Meanwhile, RedState's streiff warns Tea Party organizations that they "can't afford to be hijacked by troofers, birfers, or whatever."

What else is happening in the blogosphere?

• Liberal bloggers (Benen, Llorens, Aravosis, Bowers) rarely have good things to say about Senate Maj. Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), but they're praising him for rewriting Senate Finance Cmte Chair Max Baucus's (D-MT) jobs bill, which the netroots complain was "larded up with tax giveaways for the wealthy." That said, lefty bloggers (Black, Klein, Cole, Dayen) still think the job bill is far too small to significantly reduce unemployment. Meanwhile, Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas tweets: "I can't wait to primary Max Baucus in 2014...Can we get started on Draft [MT Gov. Brian] Schweitzer yet?"
• Several liberal bloggers (Zasloff, BooMan, Wheeler) are accusing Pres. Obama of being a wimp after he indicated that he would not use recess appointments to bypass Senate GOP opposition to certain nominees.
• Most conservative bloggers (Malkin, Lane, Hinderaker, Morrissey, Antle) are cheering Rep. Patrick Kennedy's (D-RI) decision to retire from Congress, although others (Lopez, Geraghty) are wishing him well.
• RedState editor Erick Erickson has endorsed CO SEN candidate Ken Buck (R), saying: "I like him. We're not going to have to wonder if he's one of those 'split the baby' politicians."

TX GOV: Hello And Goodbye, Debra

Conservative bloggers are hammering Medina after she refused to take a position on the 9/11 conspiracy theories:

• NRO's Geraghty: "Sometimes little-known candidates are little-known for a reason."
• Townhall's Meredith Jessup: "Though he prefers not to 'endorse' candidates, conservative talker Glenn Beck today laid to rest the candidacy of Debra Medina, a woman running to replace Rick Perry as Governor of Texas in the upcoming election."
• Hot Air's Morrissey: "Any candidate who thinks that a nutcase conspiracy theory about the US government destroying the WTC is within the realm of reasonable speculation is a candidate that richly deserves the obscurity she will shortly enter."
• Michelle Malkin: "Since Republicans seem to shy away from ideological 'purity tests,' let me propose a reasonable GOP pollution test: Resolved: The Republican Party should leave Rosie O'Donnell/Van Jones 9/11 Trutherism to the Left and the Democrats. If they want to pollute the air with their 'just asking questions' conspiracies, let them 'ask' their cockamamie 'questions' locked in Alex Jones' tinfoil-covered studio and leave the Right alone. Can we all agree? Now: Say hello and goodbye to Truther-friendly Texas gubernatorial candidate Debra Medina."
• streiff: "Last week Ms. Medina burst on the scene by way of a Rasmussen poll which indicated she would beat the Democrat candidate for governor. This week she appeared on Glenn Beck's radio show where she pulled the Ron Paul soft-troofer gambit of claiming she did not have enough evidence to take a side on whether or not the US government was involved in dropping the World Trade Center complex on 9/11. [...] Now, Ms. Medina has since released a statement disavowing the position she took on the Glenn Beck show but no number of statements can retract what she said. I'm not going to go so far as to claim Medina is a troofer. She is, I think, merely a panderer and demagogue who has seized upon the Tea Party movement as a means to achieve elective office. It is cheap, tawdry, banal, pedestrian, and a whole string of similar adjectives."

streiff continues: "The Tea Party movement has to decide whether it wishes to be a footnote in books on the 2010 election or a long term influence on American politics. If the objective is the latter then the multitude of Tea Party organizations can't afford to be hijacked by troofers, birfers, or whatever. This is not an easy task given the lack of organization structure but it is critical if the movement is not to be successfully labeled fringe."

Liberal blogger Adam Serwer snarks: "[L]ook, I can see how this can get confusing for the tea-party folks. After all, you're supposed to believe that ACORN stole the 2008 election despite the fact that ACORN has never been caught stealing any election, ever. You're supposed to think Obama might not be an American citizen, despite the fact that his birth certificate has been copied and published on the Web. You're supposed to think that the Obama administration has given Interpol the right to arrest U.S. citizens, even though he hasn't. You're supposed to believe that the Obama administration's appointment of policy advisers colloquially known as 'czars' is unprecedented (even though it isn't) and portends a potential communist takeover. You're supposed to believe that the scientific consensus on global warming has been manufactured in order to facilitate the creation of a one-world socialist government. That's a lot of crazy theories without any evidence to believe. So you can hardly blame tea-party folks if they get confused about which evidence-free conspiracy theories are OK, which ones you have to believe to be taken seriously as a member of the movement, and which evidence-free conspiracy theories might get you disavowed. It's confusing!"

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Someday, We'll Put It Together And We'll Get It All Done

The Washington Post's Ezra Klein:

"Harry Reid just put the kibosh on any attempts to change the filibuster that don't go through a 67-vote rule change process. That doesn't much surprise me: Democrats aren't in shape to spark a massive confrontation over minority rights. The people do not much like the Democrats right now, and trying to grab more power is not likely to be popular. That's why I continue to believe the best hope for reforming the filibuster is an agreement between the two parties that takes effect six or eight years into the future, when no one knows which party will initially benefit. If we can't have a functional legislature now, maybe we can someday."

LEST WE FORGET: Valentine's Day: The Movie

NRO's Jonah Goldberg:

"No I won't be seeing it, unless some rogue CIA squad, acting on bad intel, mistakes me for an al-Qaeda sleeper agent, kidnaps me, and drags me to the theater on the assumption that exposure to the film is the fastest way to break me. But, I am fascinated with the fundamental stupidity of films like this. They work on the assumption that super-successful, funny, kind, well-adjusted, and hot-as-magma women can't find dates. I watched a clip on one of the talk shows where Jessica Biel -- Queen of Planet Smoking Hot -- is wigging out because no one will ask her out. Meanwhile, these movies assume that absurdly handsome, super-sensitive rich and successful dudes, who love their dogs and mothers, do carpentry for orphans in their spare time but who're still manly enough to punch out jerks who threaten the honor of women, have a really hard time in the dating department, too.

Yes, I know movies are fantasies blah blah blah. But you wouldn't cast a filipino midget in the role of Indiana Jones. And yet these movies cast beautiful people -- I mean crazy, designed in an East German lab beautiful people -- in roles that only make sense for the basically normal looking. In the play Frankie and Johnny, the female lead was played by Kathy Bates. In the movie, Michelle Pfeiffer got the role. And Pfeiffer couldn't do better than an ex-con short-order cook in a low-rent diner.

Frankly, I find the plot of Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel more plausible."