“Ken Paxton, the Attorney General of Texas, is under a federal investigation and would love a presidential pardon.  His lawsuit is just more performative leg humping by someone desperate to curry favor with President Trump,”  Eric Erickson writes.

Speaking of performative leg humping of the media, this narrative has been pouring from the media from Day 1 of the lawsuit.

Even though it makes no sense.

The Texas lawsuit has been joined by 17 state AGs. Are the attorney generals of Missouri, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and West Virginia all under federal investigation and seeking pardons?

Senator Ted Cruz has offered to argue the case in front of the Supreme Court. Is he looking for a pardon?

72% of Republicans don’t trust the election results. Are they all under federal investigation and looking for a pardon from President Trump?

It’s funny how the very people lecturing us about conspiracy theories are so prone to believing in them. 

Attacking people’s motives has a certain common sense to it in politics, but assuming that no one you disagree with believes what they say they believe leads inevitably to living in a gnostic world of conspiracy theories in which nothing can be understood except by assuming that the other side knows you’re right, but is deliberately lying about it because of underhanded motives. And that reduces the world to the truthful people on your side and the liars on the other side.

That certainly simplifies the world, but also makes it impossible to understand.

Political movements are compelling because people who follow them believe what they believe. There’s a certain irony that Erickson, who used to lecture the media about making such assumptions about conservatives, now dispenses secondhand media lectures that assume no one believes what they believe.

The Texas lawsuit, joined by 17 other states, will stand or fall. But trying to smear state AGs who are fighting against the illegal election rigging by governors and officials who violated their own state laws while dismissing their arguments is a deeply dishonest attempt to avoid engaging with this fundamental issue.