The thorny issue of exactly how much to appease the conspiracy-theorist nutbags on the right when you're running for office has come to a head in race to be Texas governor. Birthers? Fine. 9/11 Truthers? Too much.

Via the New York Times, Debra Medina went on evil clown Glenn Beck's radio show last week. Beck asked her whether she agreed with people who thought the Bush administration were involved in plotting 9/11. "I think some very good questions have been raised in that regard," she said. "There's some very good arguments, and I think the American people have not seen all the evidence there."

At which point Beck threw her under the bus, saying "I think I can write her off the list," and opponents Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchison leapt on the comment. Medina spent several days firefighting and backtracking and using really inappropriate analogies. "This is war," she said of the primary. "They don't shoot at you until you are over the target. We are over the target." Really? You had to go with an 'over the target' metaphor?

Medina had been doing well with the crazies up until that point. She is to the right of Rick Perry — which should be an oxymoron in a civilized democracy, but somehow isn't — and will probably still be a factor in the race owing to traditionally low turnout. In fact, she seems like a model for right-wing candidates.

She talks a lot about freedom, wants to abolish property taxes, thinks she should be allowed to bring her gun into the grocery store (for what, she didn't say), is anti-abortion, wants to deploy the national guard on the Mexican border and tell the EPA they have no authority in Texas. None of which is significantly more nutty than being a truther. We predict it's about three days until we see the first 'Medina 2012' T-shirts.