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Dave Weigel tweets:

May I just say that Beck and the conservative blogosphere are doing themselves proud by dumping Medina.

Ah, the soft bigotry of low expectations. Debra Medina has flirted with 9/11 trutherism, apparently thinks there’s Soviet brainwashing afoot in the Texas police, believes Texas should be nullifying more federal laws, has been forced to deny that she’s a Bilderberger, and has been disowned as a nutjob by Glenn Beck. Glenn Beck! And of course she’s an unknown candidate running for governor against two longtime conservative stalwarts, so dropping her like a hot potato is pretty much cost-free. If you can’t dump someone like that, who can you dump?

On a more serious note, Dave looks at the bigger picture:

I think because the mainstream media were slow to cover the Tea Parties as anything but a ridiculous joke, there’s been a lot of overcompensating that imbues these activists with fresh, bold, out-of-nowhere political tactics. But that the fact is that some people on the political fringes have made lateral moves from Alex Jones-listening or Obama birth certificate-sleuthing or Bilderberg-obsessing into the Tea Party Movement. And if Glenn Beck hadn’t decided to see how far Medina wanted to go with this, she’d be on track to get into a gubernatorial run-off.

FWIW, I don’t think the tea party movement has any more chance of a long political life than Sarah Palin. Of course, for those of you who think I’m dismissing Palin too cavalierly, that might be bad news.

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DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

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And we need your support like never before to vigorously fight back against the existential threats American democracy and journalism face. We’re running behind our online fundraising targets and urgently need all hands on deck right now. We can’t afford to come up short—we have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

Please help with a donation today if you can—even just a few bucks helps. Not ready to donate but interested in our work? Sign up for our Daily newsletter to stay well-informed—and see what makes our people-powered, not profit-driven, journalism special.

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