I suppose I'm not surprised that Glenn Beck thinks the Boston Bombings were committed by someone else. And I'm not surprised that there was a hashtag blitz on Twitter supporting this "information" earlier today.

But I did find this a little surprising:

On his personal twitter feed, [online conservative aggregator Matt] Drudge predicted that 2013 would be the "year of Alex Jones," praising his show as "one hell of a broadcast in such homogenized media!"

But the conservative thirst for conspiracy theories has gotten so bad that the Official Mouthpiece of the Republican Party is actively trying to quash Beck and Jones's theories. I don't think they'll be successful, though; in the last few years, Fox News has enabled a conspiracy-friendly mindset to permeate all their coverage of the news, which peaked during the whole Benghazi affair late last year. They've created an audience hungry for liberal conspiracies, and if Fox News isn't going to supply the Boston Bombing conspiracies this time around, there's plenty of other conservative media that's willing to do that.

I don't think this is going away. I think the former Tea Party is going to get more and more swept up in conspiracy theories in the coming years. And you know which Republican presidential candidate in 2016 will be most appealing to a small-but-very-vocal crowd of people who think President Obama has been declaring secret Muslim War against America since 2008? Rand Paul. Ron Paul has been the preferred Truther candidate for years—I first heard Paul's name from Truthers, years ago—and while Rand struggles to display a more mainstream-friendly image, he's got that conspiracy-kook vibe to him. I seriously think this could be a major factor in the 2016 Republican presidential race.