For Which It Stands - Or Whom

I wrote recently about how Oklahoma Republicans got together and released a big ol' group of low-level prisoners from their prisons. I suggested then that maybe there were some things that were just the right thing to do.
And some things, red or blue, are just the wrong things to do.
Like digging up a September 11 Conspiracy Theory to get yourself back into the fading spotlight of a twenty-four hour news cycle. Tulsi Gabbard, one of more than a dozen remaining candidates for the Democratic Nomination for President, had this to say on her website: “The American people still don’t have access to the truth about Saudi Arabia and who helped Al Qaeda carry out these deadly attacks … It is absolutely unacceptable that our government’s investigation into Saudi ties has been kept from these 9/11 families and from the American people.”
Not ridiculous in its own flash of light. There continues to be a ton of potential questions out there about Saudi Arabia and all the ways our foreign policy seems to skip around the edges of Saudi Arabia. But it also smells deeply of the terror or terror agenda that hangs over a more conservative agenda. It fits in well with a number of Ms. Gabbard's other talking points: She has voted to make it harder for refugees from Syria to enter the United States. She has had praise for Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi as he’s directed a crackdown by painting much of his population as Muslim extremists. She has worked closely with supporters of Hindu nationalists in India who see the country’s millions-strong Muslim minority as a major problem. It dovetails part of the same narrative Gabbard’s used to attract fringe supporters on the left and right and to peddle debunked ideas with serious stakes for millions of vulnerable people, like repeatedly claiming that most Syrians fighting the country’s dictator Bashar Assad are tied to al Qaeda and other terror groups. 
It's a tough road to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. There are still miles to go. Not everyone will make it. But maybe we don't have to stir the mud quite so furiously along the way.