That is a complete load of BS from LorenC. I am utterly certain that it was discussed before Nov 2008 because I was discussing it with a number of people. Don’t you remember Sammy Scammy and API? Yeah exactly.
So why is it that no state (0/50), and no political party, prevented Obama’s ballot access in 2008?
Why is it no state legislature and no state DA has issued a ruling preventing Obama from being on the ballot in 2012?
Isn’t it a pity they lack your legal expertise?
I’ve been reading about 0h0m0’s lack of eligibility including his father’s Kenyan/Brit nationality from at least early summer or spring 2008, and there were large numbers of FR members doing incredible research already.
Anyone trying to claim that this wasn’t being discussed is p***ing on people’s legs and saying it’s raining.
What you remember and what actually happened are two very different things.
Go back and peruse FreeRepublic eligibility threads from 2008. You’ll find that the earliest threads about Obama’s eligibility began June 9, 2008. After NRO's Jim Geraghty asked Obama to release his birth certificate to quelch some rumors. You might find a stray comment referencing that underlying rumor prior to June, but you'll find that it wasn't taken seriously by other posters and didn't result in serious discussions, much less whole threads about his eligibility.
You’ll further find that there were no threads where anyone posited any ‘two-citizen-parent’ requirement until AFTER the election. You’ll also find that neither you nor anyone else at FR was citing Vattel until mid-to-late November 2008, and more likely December 2008..
That’s because Leo Donofrio pretty much made up that notion out of whole cloth in his pleadings. The earliest pleading of his I’ve seen to make the claim was from early November 2008 (specifically, here, where it’s tacked on almost as an afterthought), though I believe one of his pleadings from late October (that he’s never put online) may also mention it. That linked pleading went online November 15, apparently.
And the ‘two-citizen-parent’ talk didn’t make its way to FreeRepublic and other forums where Birtherism was discussed until mid-to-late November 2008 at best.
The EARLIEST I’ve found that argument showing up at FreeRepublic was in this November 19, 2008 thread. A Leo Donofrio thread, naturally.
But that was pretty much just one poster saying that mid-thread, with some follow-up discussion about it. It wasn’t until December that the argument started gaining traction at FR. Here, for instance, is a December 4 thread that helped to spread it.
And do you notice who isn’t invoked in the first several pages of that thread? Vattel. Vattel’s name didn’t start making the rounds until later. Again, you’ll notice, by the same poster, who apparently discovered Vattel in the interim days.
Only then did the argument start to snowball and pick up adherents. The evolution of it is pretty straightforward. In October 2008, nobody was arguing ‘natural-born means two citizen parents.’ Right around election day, Donofrio creates that argument. (Notice too that Donofrio's lawsuit was the first suit to make the claim, while suits filed in December started using it frequently.) A couple of weeks later, a few people start repeating it. And after a couple more weeks, a lot of people start repeating it and treating it as gospel. A look at the FR eligibility threads from the last quarter of 2008 demonstrates this evolution.
Heck, start with June 2008, and you’ll see that posters were talking Obama’s eligibility for five full months before they started claiming that ‘natural born citizen’ requires two citizen parents. Before they started citing to Vattel. Like curiosity said, only after the election actually took place did that argument take off.
And there was no reason NOT to make it, if it was a legitimate and widely accepted position. We've always known Obama's father wasn't a US citizen. And yet it wasn't until after election day that people began widely arguing that that lack of US citizenship was an absolute disqualification.
(And lest the issue be confused, 'natural born citizenship requires two citizen parents' is a different argument than 'natural born citizens cannot be born with dual citizenship.' A child can be either one without necessarily being the other. One concerns the child's citizenship, the other concerns the child's parents' citizenships. And if the matter was as simple and straightforward and obvious as 'he's disqualified because of his father's citizenship', you'd think someone would actually say that in the two years before the election. But they didn't.)
If you don’t believe me, just look at old FR threads. Do a search for the ‘certifigate’ or ‘naturalborncitizen’ tag. Do a search specifically for BP2’s posts, as he became one of the earliest and most ardent advocates of that claim as seen above, and you can see precisely when he started advancing it. And it wasn’t prior to November 2008.
And hey, if you actually find it being discussed earlier, let me know. Post the links, like I’ve done above. I’ve looked and I can’t find anything, but I won’t ignore links to actual, dated discussions that I’ve missed. It’s not like FR scrubbed all the threads that would contradict me. (Heck, I'd be interested in isolated instances that *didn't* lead to discussions like you say, and were just ignored or dismissed as wrong by other posters.) But there’s no reason to trust your own hazy two-year-old recollection over actual preserved discussions that lay out a contrary evolution of the argument.
Don’t you remember Sammy Scammy and API?
Yes, but how is that relevant? Korir’s claim (from October 2008) was that Michelle Obama stated that Barack was adopted by Lolo Soetoro. That’s wholly unrelated to the claim that natural born citizenship requires two citizen parents.
To illustrate this, here are two threads (one being rather lengthy) concerning Korir and his phantom tape. See any mentions of ‘two citizen parent’ requirements therein?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2105779/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2106375/posts