Dr. Melissa Clouther is exactly right:
The Birther issue serves one important purpose: if the whole of the Right can be painted as conspiratorial nutters, then the Left doesn’t have to defend or explain very unpopular policies like Cap-n-Trade, Card Check and Health Care.
It is, in short, a diversion. When you got no game, play dirty.
For those of you who don’t know, Birthers are folks who are demanding that the President prove he is a “natural-born citizen” by producing an authentic birth certificate from Hawaii. I am not convinced that their doubts have any real validity, considering that the authenticity of the birth certificate has been confirmed by the correct authorities in Hawaii.
I’m more interested in how much coverage the Birthers are getting from the MSM these days. I can’t recall that the Truthers (you know, the nutters who believe that our government was either complicit or directly responsible in the 9/11 attacks) got as much media coverage even though the Truther movement is not at all a fringe movement on the left. You’d think an objective media would have at least given the Truther movement a good airing out by now, but no.
And it’s not going to happen, either. They have their distraction and they’re going to use it for all it’s worth.
Tags: Birthers, Media Bias
RE “I am not convinced that their doubts have any real validity”
Me too. But they have the right to request that the candidate demonstrate his eligibility.
And the candidate does not have a right to refuse.
It’s the filing-to-dismiss, the distortions, the namecalling which is the real smoking gun here. It signifies.
(It’s not just his birth certificate, but his total citizenship history which has been hidden. His website has admitted dual-citizenship which should disqualify him just as it does Schwarzenegger. He needs to explain how he afforded Columbia and Harvard. He needs to document whether his first US passport was the 1985 one. The term “birther” itself is quite manipulative.)
See, I don’t know if that’s true. If they have the right to request and Obama can’t refuse then, well, the past six months could not have happened. Obviously either they don’t have the right to make the request or he has the right to refuse, or both. Otherwise it would have seen by now by more than the DOH of Hawaii (whose word the Birthers have not dealt with sufficiently).
I don’t think it signifies, either. Really, he could just as easily be refusing, knowing that his refusals are costing the Birthers money that could be going to defeat his health care plan, the Stimulus Bill, his cap and trade plan, and so on. Also, that money could be in the coffers of a good conservative candidate. But it isn’t and I’m pretty sure he knows that. Meanwhile, he’s not using his own money to defend himself. It’s in his best political interests to string out the Birthers as long as he can.
As well, the longer this gets strung out, the more strident the Birthers get and they are right on the verge of looking like a bunch of conspiracy-mongering cranks as it is.
So you don’t want to ask these “authorities:”
“Exactly how do you verify a document you now admit you destroyed?”
Did the Hawaii DOH say they destroyed his birth certificate? I hadn’t heard that.
Also “a reader”, I”m not entirely sure that dual citizenship disqualifies one from being President. I could be wrong about that, though. Schwarzenegger is disqualified because he’s a naturalized citizen, not for his dual citizenship.
“if the whole of the Right can be painted as conspiratorial nutters, then the Left doesn’t have to defend or explain very unpopular policies like Cap-n-Trade, Card Check and Health Care.”
If the media never asks these tough questions and continues, as a group, to allow the Obama administration to “handle” them the way they do now, the Democrats aren’t going to have to answer any tough questions anyway. And that’s how its been long before there was a “birther” movement for which righty-blogs could use to beat its own side and lay blame on for the reason we don’t get answers to these pressing issues. Please….
I think there is an awful lot of ‘managing the narrative’ afoot here.
I’ll give the POTUS a bye on the birth certificate. Chief Justice Roberts swore the man in. At some point you have to say ‘good enough’.
So, I’ll compromise on any Constitutional birth question.
Now: show me all the school records.
What, those remain sealed?
Now we have the Streisand Effect. Pony up, mike foxtrot.
Here’s a very good rundown on the birth certificate issue from the aspect of the different types that are possibles and how they differ. And also, by the way, why the statement by the Department of Health official is possibly misleading.
http://www.westernjournalism.com/?page_id=2697
I believe it’s also a fact that Obama’s younger sister who is known to have born in Indonesia has a Hawaiian birth certificate.
And please also note that this is not about whether Obama is a US citizen (although that too could be up in the air, if you really want to get into it!), but whether he meets the legal requirements of a “natural born” citizen – which is a different matter and only a requirement for eligibility to be president.
You know, no other presidential candidate has ever been forced to produce the original copy of his birth certificate. I don’t know of any state that releases such documents. They only release official copies, which in this case could either be the copy he has or digital version under Hawaii law. And we’ve always accepted the state’s word on this. You can’t prove Ronald Reagan was born in the United States anymore than you prove Obama was. If we are not willing to accept a state’s word on the validity of their own documents, then we must apply the same standards to all states and say that no state can verify its own documents. Therefore, no person born in the United States is eligible for the presidency. Only persons born on foreign soil to two American citizens and issued a birth certificate by an embassy can qualify. Because only federal documents would be considered valid. In the real world, Hawaii is the only legal authority that can rule on the validity of their own birth documents. The Feds can only rule on whether their documentation procedure meets federal guidelines. And they have, and Hawaii’s procedure meet federal standards. And Hawaii has ruled the certificate valid. There simply is no jurisdiction here unless the Federal government wants to take authority over state documents. And that would be such a massive attack on federalism and the Constitution that nobody would stand for it. But what I don’t get is when did conservatives become so opposed to state sovereignty? They really want to overrule a state’s right to declare a birth? Do conservatives really want the FBI in every maternity ward verifying who was born when? Let the states handle it, and don’t question them.
What I don’t get is when did liberals get interested in states’ rights, tom?
Just so you know, you’re not really preaching to an uninformed choir here (even though you try a little trolling with your attempt to pin this on “conservatives”). I covered the Hawaii thing already in my post.
However I will say that the likely reason no other Presidential candidate was forced to release his birth certificate is because not other Presidential candidate made his various other nationalities such a major part of his campaign. I suspect had President Obama not campaigned as a “citizen of the world”, whatever the hell that is, this wouldn’t matter.
But, just to keep things straight, John McCain released his birth records because of questions from the Democrats about the status of his birth. So it’s not like the Birthers were the first to that contention.
>>In the real world, Hawaii is the only legal authority that can rule on the validity of their own birth documents.>>
No one challenges the validity of the actual birth certificate. Nobody – other than the Department of Health official – has actually seen it. That’s the problem in a nutshell. Which type of birth certificate does he have?
Read my link, fostert.