“In 2008, no one used any of these election laws to challenge Obama’s eligibility. Instead, lawsuits were filed after the election.”
There was a lawsuit filed by a Dem, and was told that he had no standing due to obama had not been elected yet. (I’m working from memory here, the reasoning could be wrong).
I don't think that's right. Do you know the name of the case? Or which court?
There was a lawsuit filed by a Dem, and was told that he had no standing due to obama had not been elected yet. (I’m working from memory here, the reasoning could be wrong).
John McCain and the RNC should have been filing these lawsuits and demanding proof once Obama was selected as the nominee. *I* and I dare say a lot of other people expected them to do just that, and was quite surprised when they did nothing.
It is my opinion that both John McCain and the RNC thought the issue would not go well for them politically, and therefore decided to ignore it. Had they pursued the challenge, Black Americans would have seen it as a dirty trick to disenfranchise one of theirs, the media would have also played it that way, and the critics would have said "Who is John McCain to say someone else isn't a "natural born citizen" when *HE* was born in Panama?"
Given how badly the public understands the term "natural born citizen" (Most of them think just being born here is all that is necessary) more people would have seen John McCain as ineligible than would have seen Barack Obama as ineligible.
I think John McCain AND the RNC thought his candidacy would be utterly destroyed if they put the eligibility weapon on the table. I also suspect this is why the party apparatchiks have gone to such efforts to squelch the "birther" issue. It would be tantamount to admitting they were playing games with our laws.