Then how come we didn't hear a peep about it before the election?
After all, everybody knew Zero's daddy was a foreigner. He'd gotten rich off a book about the very fact. Here he is introducing himself to the nation by giving the keynote address at the Democrat convention in 2004:
On behalf of the great state of Illinois, crossroads of a nation, Land of Lincoln, let me express my deepest gratitude for the privilege of addressing this convention.Tonight is a particular honor for me because, let’s face it, my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely. My father was a foreign student, born and raised in a small village in Kenya. He grew up herding goats, went to school in a tin-roof shack. His father -- my grandfather -- was a cook, a domestic servant to the British.
But my grandfather had larger dreams for his son. Through hard work and perseverance my father got a scholarship to study in a magical place, America, that shone as a beacon of freedom and opportunity to so many who had come before.
Zero's Fight the Smears website presents his Hawaiian CoLB naming his parents and quotes the following statement by FactCheck.org (29 August 2008):
“When Barack Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4,1961, in Honolulu, Kenya was a British colony, still part of the United Kingdom’s dwindling empire. As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.‘s children.Since Sen. Obama has neither renounced his U.S. citizenship nor sworn an oath of allegiance to Kenya, his Kenyan citizenship automatically expired on Aug. 4,1982.”
Zero was proud of his daddy. The smear he was fighting was the allegation that he was born as he said he was.
So, we see he was not hiding any Vattel-relevant facts about his origin. Rather just the opposite. But nobody trotted out the Vattel theory until after the election. The first thread I could find on FR was in December, 2008, discussing Leo Donofrio's legal arguments (which have gone exactly nowhere). Prior to that, the birther argument for his ineligibility depended solely on foreign birth to a married mother too young to pass on citizenship, yada, yada. Problem was, he was born in Honolulu.
And, further, his mother's marriage was invalid due to bigamy. Thus the age limit did not apply, so little bastard Barry would have been eligible even if born in Kenya!
Geeze, I have answered this so many times it's becoming a mantra. Obama led everyone to believe that he was foreign born for years prior to running for President. Since most Americans have the false notion that birth within our borders is the salient requirement for citizenship, the most pressing issue was to determine if he was even born within our borders. His release of that little rump document COLB rather than settling the issue, made it appear that he was trying very hard to hide the truth about it.
He was giving every indication of trying to dodge the question, and everybody smelled blood. Naturally people became focused on his odoriferous birth certificate rather than the secondary point. If he couldn't even prove he was born here, what need to go any further?
Add to that all the hanky panky laws Hawaii has allowing birth certificates to be issued to people not actually born there, and all his previous claims of having been from "Kenya", and that is exactly why most people focused on his birth certificate and not his father. His father was just as disqualifying, but apparently nowadays most Americans are so utterly ignorant of this fact, thinking instead that the 14th amendment is all that matters on this question.
Eventually more knowledgeable people started getting heard on the father issue.
In any case, your question belies the point. I have demonstrated to you with the links I provided that no one made this up. It has ALWAYS been a requirement, and the fact that most people are ignorant of it does not render it void. That you didn't see much discussion of it until after the election is because many people didn't believe Obama could even pass the first hurdle (born in our borders) after he submitted that computer print-out certificaTION, and so people followed the birth certificate discussion as they would a magician's gesturing hand.