John Hawkins on the disturbing and destructive “mainstreaming” of conspiracy monger Alex Jones by the right wing: Conservatives Shouldn’t Be Conned: Alex Jones Is Crazypants.

During the 2008 Republican primaries, Ron Paul was semi-regularly appearing on the Alex Jones show. Setting aside any other disagreements I had with Ron Paul, I really didn’t appreciate the fact that he was helping to legitimize a kook by appearing on his show.

Well, since the election, Alex Jones has apparently mainstreamed his website a bit, starting hammering the Democrats much more than he has done over the last few years, and seems to be slowly but surely starting to creep away from the fringes and towards the mainstream on the Right.

I’ve seen more and more conservative websites linking to Jones and now Fox’s Andrew Napolitano is doing his show.

This disturbs me. Let me tell you why.

It’s not just Alex Jones, though; Ron Paul is appearing on Fox News more and more often as well, and kooks like Glenn Beck, Lew Rockwell, and Michele Bachmann are becoming more acceptable to conservative audiences. It’s just more bad craziness.