Apparently Debra Medina abruptly and inadvertently wiped out her chances to be Texas’ next governor on Glenn Beck’s radio show today.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s the video. She pretty much destroys herself about a minute in. I love the way Beck continues to offer to take away her shovel, but she just keeps on digging.
I’ve been following Debra’s candidacy since I heard about her in November. Prior to this I think she was a pretty good candidate, and two days ago she was polling inside the margin of error of Hutchison.
She’s posted at her own website absolutely denying she is a Truther. Unfortunately, she hasn’t learned the first rule of holes: When in one, stop digging. Her explanations of what happened are fine, to an extent, but she needs to say she muffed her answer (she says now she misunderstood the question and was answering what she _thought_ Beck asked) and move on.
The Christian Science Monitor has run a story on this:
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/The-Vote/2010/0211/Debra-Medina-self-destructs-on-Glenn-Beck-radio-show
The local Houston Fox News showed a clip that really didn’t make her look bad. After I saw it, I wondered what the flap was; not having an opportunity to click through Rand’s link. Then this morning, I heard the extended clip. I don’t know how she can claim she misunderstood the question. It was set up about as open as I think it could be.
When someone says, “people have claimed you are a 9-11 truther, what do you say to that?” The answer should be, “I’m not; I think those people making the claims and the truthers are both wrong.” No more elaboration is necessary. You want to question government? Fine. But that wasn’t the question being asked.
Sad part is I really wanted to see Perry go, and I definitely don’t want to see Hutchison or White as Governor.
Explanations I can think of for her answer:
1. She really is a truther.
2. She’s taken a skeptics position so she doesn’t offend the truthers, for votes or whatever reasons.
3. She’s taken a skeptics position because she’s never really paid attention to truther claims; out of reflex she won’t commit to a position over something she hasn’t studied, even one whose veracity should be self-evident.
The fallacy of trutherism shoudl be easy to figure out, even for those who haven’t read Popular Mechanics’ excellent analysis of 9/11 myths.
1. Bush and company are not murderers.
2. It is logistically impossible to rig the WTC for explosives in secrecy. Even Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe don’t have the thinking-outside-the-box cleverness to figure out a way.
Unfortunately our choices have boiled down to this. In one corner we have Governor Rick “LePetomane” Perry, whose defunct Trans-Texas Corridor project looks like the plot to Blazing Saddles on steroids. In the other we have the pork-spending Kay Bailey Hutchison.
Where’s Chuck Norris when we need one of those mysterious powers of his to clean up this mess?