Birthers Gearing Up for Obama's Re-Election?

Birthers Bend Reality, So Why Not Time?

I would answer with a question: Why wouldn't I care?

Like the current issue about the literary agency; as the proposition goes, "The source of the Birther controversy may have been Obama's own literary agent."

Which, of course, is why we're only hearing about it now, after the controversy has been alight for years.

And, as media reports have it:

"Look, it's very simple," said Trump, who has spent the past 13 months questioning Obama's constitutional eligibility to occupy the White House (and only doubled down with his stubborn skepticism after Obama produced a long-form birth certificate, certifying he was born on Aug. 4, 1961, in Hawaii, and then hilariously roasted him at the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner. "A book publisher came out three days ago and said that in his written synopsis of his book," Trump went on, "he said he was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia. His mother never spent a day in the hospital."

Actually, Obama's literary agency at the time, two decades ago, published a recently discovered catalogue of clients and their projects that included erroneous information about Obama and a prospective book about race that he ended up not writing. An agency assistant back then, Miriam Goderich, said last week that she was mistaken when she wrote that Obama was born in Kenya

But Trump isn't buying it.

(Grove; boldface and bold-italic accents added)​

In other words, no, the information only surfaced recently, which is why Birthers hadn't seized on it before. Or, perhaps, we might wonder why, if there were exiting copies of the material, Birthers had not found it yet. And there are perfectly reasonable explanations for that, such as the possibility that only a few copies remained in existence, and those people either hadn't looked at the information in years, or perhaps are Democratic sympathizers, or whatever. It doesn't mean Birthers are too stupid to find what's right under their noses, since it probably wasn't right under their noses until recently.

But, given the fact that the information is emerging and fueling speculation right now, as opposed to, say, three years ago, it seems difficult to suggest this is somehow a "source" of the Birther controversy. Do Birthers have a time machine?

Combined with the notion of a conspiracy theory that actually predates Barack Obama's birth, one might wonder why we're wasting so much time rehashing and trying to justify anew a completely useless, petty issue.

Yes, people would care if Barack Obama was not, by birth, qualified to be president. But the conspiracy theory is junk. In the end, it seems quite true that Birthers genuinely believe that Barack Obama is not, by birth, qualified to be president. But they know they can't actually be honest about what that means and expect to be taken seriously, so they're cobbling together a worthless conspiracy theory hoping people will take that seriously.

Just like we would care if it turns out the U.S. government was responsible for 9/11. But even the harshest indictment I can issue against the Bush administration is that their culpability was "letting it happen" because they were incompetent. I wouldn't even go so far as to say they cynically let it happen in order to foment a world war. The idea that the Bush administration is culpable because it ordered a false-flag attack? Well, if that theory is ever to be taken seriously, people are going to need a better starting point than suspension of disbelief.

I can't even figure where to begin with that.

Let's see ... a professional conspiracy theorist? Oh, reliable.

Communists? Scary, scary!

Black liberation theology? Oh no! Hide your daughters! Them uppity negroes is a-comin'!

No, really. What the hell, man? An amoral, self-indulgent hack polemicist like that one? Yeah, that's a credible "source".

Although I think it might be a more convincing book if the voice was just a little haughtier, a pinch more full of itself.

But, yeah. You know, because it's all the same thing. If Obama's not a scary African black man, then he's a scary black communist religious extremist puppet.

You provide an excellent example of why people think Birtherism is just ill-concealed racism.
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Notes:

Grove, Lloyd. "Mitt Romney's New BFF: Donald Trump". The Daily Beast. May 25, 2012. TheDailyBeast.com. May 25, 2012. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/25/mitt-romney-s-new-bff-donald-trump.html

 

The Birther Effect

The Birther Effect

Todd S. Purdum, of Vanity Fair, considers the historical currents underpinning Birtherism:

It has been more than a year since President Obama produced a copy of his long-form birth certificate from Hawaii—and nearly 50 years since the historian Richard Hofstadter first coined the phrase “the paranoid style in American politics.” But the continuing “birther” circus in Arizona demonstrates that this is one non-issue—and one national character flaw—that is never going to go away ....

.... This would all be funny, if it weren’t so sad—and more than a little bit scary. Fittingly enough, Hofstadter’s analysis had its origins in another Arizonan, Barry Goldwater, whose campaign for the G.O.P. nomination is what inspired Hofstadter’s lecture at Oxford University in 1963 and his essay in Harper’s magazine the following year. Hofstadter acknowledged that he was borrowing the term “paranoid” from psychiatry and that it was pejorative. But the phenomenon he described was anything but new, and not necessarily limited to right-wingers. Irrational venom had variously been turned against Freemasons, Jesuits, Progressives, and—perhaps most famously, with McCarthyism—against Communists.

“The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms,” Hofstadter wrote. “He traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values.” He is “always manning the barricades of civilization” and “does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician.”

“Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil,” he added, “what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish.”​

Purdum points to the Arizona issue with Ken Bennett pursuing the president's birth records. "Bennett went out of his way to insist that he himself was not a 'birther' but was simply trying to satisfy the concerns of his alarmed constituents. That’s either a painful reflection of the political fear the question generates or a remarkably disingenuous and self-serving statement. Whenever someone says, 'It’s not about the money,' it’s about the money."

The Arizona incident is not without its repercussions; pundits and watchers cannot help but conflate Bennett's months-long go-round with Hawaii with the infamously ornery Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Such as Dale McFeatters' two cents about the Arizona Birther battle:

It's a role for which the state seems well-suited. Arizona Republic columnist Laurie Roberts wrote, "We've long been the land of crackpottery and lunacy" ....

.... Never mind that this issue has long been put to rest in the mind of every rational American. Bennett perhaps began to have second thoughts when he found himself denounced by national news organizations as pandering to crackpots, the tool of half-baked clowns, a practitioner of political buffoonery and a legitimizer of lunatic leanings.

That's not what you want on your resume if you're planning, as Bennett apparently is, to run for governor in two years.

He finally did what any state official could do and asked Hawaii for a copy of Obama's birth certificate. Hawaii complied, and his office quickly and quietly dropped its effort to prove that Obama was an illegal immigrant who sneaked across the Rio Grande to take jobs from Arizonans.​

Given the timing, it's hard to not see a connection:

Arpaio also is after Obama's draft records, which would seem to be beside the point because, as president, Obama is commander in chief of the U.S. armed forces, including the state militias. It says so in the Constitution, although Arpaio might want to demand that the National Archives prove that its copy is not a forgery ....

.... However, Hawaiian officials — who have never struck me as a particularly devious bunch (I have kids stationed there) — said that the Arizonans met with the deputy director of health, the director being away, and a deputy attorney general and that they were provided with all the relevant documentation.

Arpaio pronounced: "We feel this document is a forgery. We're trying to figure out who did it. That's good police work." Well, if the sheriff says so, but calling your hosts forgers seems unlikely to guarantee much in the way of future cooperation.​

However one looks at it, though, the New Birther Army is catching the attention of the Republican Party's upper echelons. CNN's Peter Hamby explains:

Dark theories about President Barack Obama's citizenship show no signs of fading away.

But "birthers," as those skeptics of Obama's heritage are known, no longer seem relegated to tinfoil hat fringes of American politics.

Instead, it's Republican members of Congress, elected officials and state party organizations -- in Arizona, Iowa and Florida -- that are responsible for the latest round of conspiracy-mongering. And the loose talk could cause a headache for Mitt Romney this election season.

The issue flared this week in Iowa, a closely watched electoral battleground, where the state GOP wrote a passage into its proposed party platform calling on presidential candidates to "show proof of being a natural-born citizen," beginning with the 2012 election.

Don Racheter, chairman of the Iowa Republican Party's platform committee, told Radio Iowa that the language was intentionally crafted as a "shot" at Obama.​

Hamby points to the Arizona debacle and the emergence of new Birther names in the Republican congressional caucuses. "Fresh examples appear," he suggests, "on a near-weekly basis".

Including a recent occasion in North Carolina in which The Charlotte Observer retracted its endorsement of congressional candidate Jim Pendergraph for various reasons, including Birtherism:

What a run for Republican Jim Pendergraph. After winning the Observer’s endorsement in his bid for Congress, he has done nothing but embarrass us and himself.

By buddying up to one of America’s more hateful egomaniacs and then joining with fringe “birthers” to question President Obama’s citizenship, Pendergraph has contradicted much of what he told the Observer’s editorial board in his endorsement interview last month. As a result, we have lost faith in him, and urge voters to consider Edwin Peacock or Ric Killian in the 9th Congressional District race.

Not infrequently, the Observer endorses candidates with whom we do not agree on all, or even most, of the issues. That is because we consider the views of the constituents the candidate seeks to represent. We often endorsed Rep. Sue Myrick using that logic. When choosing among 10 Republicans in the 9th District race, we considered not only the extent to which we agreed with the candidate but the extent to which he represented the views of the conservative 9th District. We seek a candidate with integrity, intellect, common sense and sincerity, and whose views are not so extreme as to not reflect his district.​

Republican strategist Steve Schmidt told Hamby, "Birtherism is a fringe issue," and acknowledged that "it's disturbing" when politicians one respects cross over into the realm. Rob Johnson, an advisor to Gov. Rick Perry, calls Birtherism "an unnecessary and unfortunate distraction". GOP Chair Reince Priebus has denounced the movement, as well. "I've been pretty clear now for over a year," he told CNN, "that this issue is a distraction."

Conventional wisdom suggests that, as Schmidt suggests, every day Mitt Romney's economic campaign is drowned out by Birtherism, "is a bad day for him". True, some might wonder just what that economic message is, but that is a whole separate discussion. Still, though, the looming spectre of Birther madness not only detracts from time people might otherwise spend thinking about economic or security issues, or some such, but also asserts an affirmative bond between the tinfoil fringe and the Republican Party. One-two, friendly fire.

Well, maybe not so friendly; one would not be far off to suspect a correlation between Birthers and Republican supporters who are not enthused about pushing a Mitt Romney campaign. But the point would require at least a subconscious sabotage of Romney's campaign, with the payoff being four more years of fighting the absolute injustice of the Obama presidency versus retooling the message for a soulless, moderate, white Republican in the White House. And, sure, that's possible, but that can't be what we're seeing; it's way too easy if that's what we're seeing.

Perhaps, then, the question is whether the voter enthusiasm Birthers draw will match or exceed the potential loss of support in the swing bloc.
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Notes:

Purdum, Todd S. "The Conception of the Birther". Vanity Fair. May 24, 2012. VanityFair.com. May 28, 2012. http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/...y-goldwater-richard-hofstadter-arizona-arpaio

McFeatters, Dale. "Arizona unleashes its birthers". The Record Searchlight. May 28, 2012. Redding.com. May 28, 2012. http://www.redding.com/news/2012/may/28/dale-mcfeatters-arizona-unleashes-its-birthers/

Hamby, Peter. "Despite a frustrated GOP, anti-Obama 'birthers' still persist". CNN. May 23, 2012. CNN.com. May 28, 2012. http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/23/politics/birthers-arizona-iowa/index.html

Editorial Board. "2 better choices in 9th Congressional District". The Charlotte Observer. May 3, 2012. CharlotteObserver.com. May 28, 2012. http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/05/03/3217068/2-better-choices-in-9th-congressional.html

 

Ah gold..

Trump continued to argue that "many people" do not believe in the authenticity of Obama's certificate, and told Blitzer that if he reported the story "accurately," he might get better ratings, which Trump said he thought were "pretty small."

After Trump continued to argue in favor of birther conspiracy thories, Blitzer said, "Donald, you’re beginning to sound a little ridiculous, I have to tell you."

"No I think you are, Wolf," Trump fired back. "Let me tell you something, I think you sound ridiculous and if you’d ask me a question and let me answer it."

"Here’s the question," Blitzer interrupted. "Did the conspiracy start in 1961 where the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and the Honolulu advertiser contemporaneously published announcements that he was born in Hawaii?"

"That's right. And many people put those announcements in because they wanted to get the benefits of being so-called born in this country. Many people did it. It was something that was done by many people even though they weren’t born in the country. You know and so do I. And so do a lot of your viewers, although you don't have many viewers, Wolf," Trump argued.

[Source]
​

Romney has yet to repudiate Trump's comments and his increasing his push on the "birther" issue. Romney, did however say this:

You know, I don't agree with all the people who support me and my guess is they don't all agree with everything I believe in. But I need to get 50.1 percent or more and I'm appreciative to have the help of a lot of good people.​

I believe that is called a 'hello fence, meet my buttocks, I need to sit on you for a while' moment.

Trump's spokesman seems to have a bit more sense, however, and possibly recognises that his employer may be damaging the GOP:

"He doesn't want to talk about it."

Or so said Michael Cohen, Donald Trump's spokesman, on the question of where President Obama was born.

Cohen, in a phone interview, called the renewed controversy over Trump's questioning of whether Obama was born in the U.S. "a distraction," and blamed it on "the liberal media."

______________________________________________

"This manufactured conflict is just another attempt by Democrats to distract Americans from President Obama's abysmal record," Cohen gamely argued...
​

Unfortunately, Cohen had obviously not advised his employer to remain silent on the issue..

But five minutes after The Huffington Post talked to Cohen on the phone, a call to Trump's New York offices resulted in the casino, real-estate and reality-TV mogul being patched through on the line, from here in Las Vegas.

Adding to the surreal nature of the day, Trump openly disagreed with his own spokesman's assessment.

"I don't imagine this is distraction at all," Trump said. "In fact, we have a fundraiser that's going to take place in a couple of hours, and I'm just walking through the lobby of Trump international and this place is packed."

And that, in a nutshell, is the problem for Mitt Romney.

________________________________________________________

Trump told HuffPost Tuesday that he disagreed with Breitbart's assessment, and talked for almost 10 minutes about why the Obama campaign -- which released a web video and a statement condemning Romney for not disavowing Trump's comments -- actually wants the birther issue to go away.

"It's hitting very close to home and they're very nervous about it," Trump said. "They're very afraid of the issue. They don't like the issue. And you know what? You'd say the same thing if you were in their position."

He said the Obama campaign was trying to use "reverse psychology."

"When something that they don't like gets put in papers the best thing you can do is say, 'Oh we love it, we love it.' What they're doing is reverse psychology and I don't blame them one bit. They hate this subject. They hate it more than anybody has hated any subject, and the best they can do is to just say, 'Oh we're so happy it was brought up,'" Trump said. "And people like you, who I assume they consider are suckers, write exactly what they say. And I don't know if you're a sucker or not. It depends on whether or not you write it."

"They don't love it at all. They hate it. And let me tell you, I have plenty of friends in there and they will tell you, they will tell me, they do not like this subject one bit. This is not a good subject for them," he said.

Trump also said Obama should release his college transcripts

_________________________________________________________

Trump told HuffPost that the Romney campaign had not asked him to stop talking about the birther subject, but the fact that Trump's own spokesman in Las Vegas clearly wanted to make the issue go away, only to have Trump connect by phone to a HuffPost reporter through his New York office, was the clearest illustration that Trump is apparently accountable to, and controllable by, no one.
​

And it seems, neither has the Romney campaign, who advised he appreciates the help he's getting from the 'good people'.. Maybe they should start telling him to shut up. I would think that would be more help than twiddling thumbs and hoping no one notices.

 

Pete Hoekstra: Federalize Birtherism

Pete Hoekstra: Federalize Birtherism, Put CIA and FBI in Charge of Who Gets to Run for President

Perhaps you recall Pete Hoekstra's name from a notorious political advertisement aired during the Super Bowl, featuring an actress thanking his opponent, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, in pidgin English.

Hoekstra actually had a good run in Congress already, serving Michigan's 2nd Congressional District in the U.S House of Representatives for eighteen years.

The nine-term Congressman is back, pursuing Stabenow's seat in the U.S. Senate, and in a desperate attempt to pick up more voters—the likely Republican candidate might lead his GOP opponents handily, but he trails the Democratic incumbent by about sixteen points—Hoekstra has thrown his lot in with Birthers.

A man in the audience complained to Hoekstra about President Obama's birth certificate, "It's on the computer, it's everywhere, you hear people talking about it," but nobody is doing anything about it, and he wanted Hoekstra's thoughts on the matter.

"Sure. I mean, I think — you know, I think, throw something at me if you want, I think with this president, the book is closed, all right?" Hoekstra tells the man. "It's kind of like, I hate to say it, but I think the debate's over — we lost that debate, and we lost that debate in 2008, when our presidential nominee said, 'I ain't talking about it.' OK, I'm sorry.

"But I do now believe that I'd like to establish a three-person office in Washington, D.C., OK — knowing it, we'll go to five (audience laughs). But there's no reason why we should have this kind of question, you know, for the president of the United States. So that at any future election, all right, that someone would have to walk into that office, and prove that they meet the minimum qualifications to be president of the United States" ....

.... "OK, I am a Dutch immigrant. I do not — maybe now I do — up until three or four years ago, I didn't believe I met the qualifications to be president of the United States. Am I right?

"And so, but you know, this is not brain surgery — it should be an FBI person, maybe a CIA person and one person managing those two people, and just if you want to run for president, you've got to go with the right, proper documentation, you go to that person, and get it certified that you meet the qualification to be president of the United States. You are the right age, you were born in the United States, or of U.S. citizens. And it's done.

"You know, it's embarrassing that we are at that point where that ever became an issue. Sorry, I'd love to give you an answer, I'm gonna fight, and we're gonna beat it, and we're gonna win it. I think it wasn't fought, and we lost. Sorry."

(Kleefeld)​

With only a 29% approval rating among voters, Hoekstra apparently thinks this sort of talk will boost his numbers.

Just like the pidgin advert did.

Oh, right. His numbers dropped after that one.

So, yeah. Blatant racism didn't work. So ... you know, let's try Birtherism.
_____________________

Notes:

Joseph, Cameron. "Hoekstra defends ad against charges of racial insensitivity". The Hill. February 6, 2012. TheHill.com. May 30, 2012. http://thehill.com/video/senate/208793-hoekstra-super-bowl-ad-hits-debbie-spend-it-now-on-debt

Kleefeld, Eric. "Senate Candidate Hoekstra: Create A National Birther Office". Talking Points Memo. May 30, 2012. 2012.TalkingPointsMemo.com. May 30, 2012. http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2...kstra-establish-a-national-birther-office.php

Reens, Nate. "Pete Hoekstra remains clear GOP favorite, would lose handily to Sen. Debbie Stabenow". MLive. May 30, 2012. MLive.com. May 30, 2012. http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/index.ssf/2012/05/poll_pete_hoekstra_remains_cle.html

 

Birthers Are As Birthers Do

Of course, because "vanished from the face of the earth" is synonymous with "an institution refusing to turn over records to every half-witted egomaniac who demands them".

And, of course, you've only helped the Birther cause by referring to an article that doesn't even have the decency of including the author's name.

And, hey, since you're a tinfoil conspiracy theorist: Why do you think that is?

(Note: If one chooses to answer that question, something better than idiocy would help the credibility of the assertion.)