Posted on 07/28/2009 10:20:47 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The GOP, reduced to hosting loonies who obsess over Obama’s birthplace, is slipping into the ash heap. The Daily Beast’s John Batchelor on why Republican incoherence may doom the party to the fate of the Whigs.
The romantic yarn that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, not in the United States, and is therefore an illegitimate POTUS is the core of a still-evolving conspiracy theory that now explodes like a neutron stink bomb splashing on the right wing while leaving the center and left idly smiling and curious.
What is going on with the despondent Republican Party that it hosts loonies called the birthers in its ranks?
The answer may be that the birther phenomenon is a mutation of a political virus called incoherence. Incoherence is fatal. It killed the Whigs (and led to the creation of the Republicans); it killed the Klan and the American communists. The birther mutation looks to erase what remains of the GOP’s credibility with the electorate, already at an all-time low and still sinking to third- and fourth-party numbers, if there were a third or a fourth party.
In sudden alarm Monday night, 158 House Republicans voted with the Democrats to endorse the self-evident fact that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. No whipping by the GOP leadership was necessary. The House Republicans understood that birtherism has jumped to a pandemic Phase 6, multiple infections in all states, much too late to stop with a quarantine on the Hill.
Already, a handful of House Republican members show signs of succumbing to the symptoms of brain fever—wagging fingers, dry-mouth stammering—by co-sponsoring a bill to require presidential candidates to submit a birth certificate. The primary patient is California Republican John Campbell, who showed tertiary impatience with his triteness on TV when he proposed, “It doesn’t matter if I have doubts or not, OK?”
August recess means that the Hill Republicans must go home to their districts to face the birtherite pod people, and there will be additional farcical confrontations similar to what the chump moderate Republican Rep. Mike Castle faced recently at a town-hall meeting in Delaware, when birthers flourished their birth certificates at him.
The pandemic is out of control, and those who argue cynically that birtherism is being stoked by the media, or fed by the cunning White House political operation to gain sympathy for a panicky presidency, are not examining the peculiar details of the potency of the illness.
This is not a pandemic that spreads only by the airplane, the Internet, or even by word of mouth, because a single exposure to the central whopper is not usually sufficient. Daily reinfection is needed or the disease goes dormant like algebra. Birtherism has found a durable vector, ubiquitous like insects and slippery like long-tailed mammals, in the institution of talk radio and its cable-TV compadre. The boss vectors just now are the burlesque artist Rush Limbaugh—“Barack Obama has yet to prove he’s a citizen”—and Limbaugh’s parasitic rival of bloviation, faux rueful Lou Dobbs: “I don’t know what the reality is. No one does.”
What is also striking about this mutation is that, as a talking vector, you do not need to endorse the birther template that the president was born of an 18-year-old girl who raced to Mombasa in time to deliver in an unnamed setting. You are just as effective a vector if you deny the birtherite creativity, if you produce the Hawaii documents, if you say the magic words “smear” or “tin-foil.”
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs is a fertile source when he uses the briefing room to evince exasperation: “…this question in many ways continues to astound me.” Cable-TV stars such as the giddy Chris Matthews—“The birthers don’t let the facts get in the way”—and the stern Bill O’Reilly—“The Factor investigated it and found out that it’s bogus …”—become like Typhoid Marys, spreading an illness to which they claim immunity. Ratings, anyone?
Grimly, the birther episode is not a media story, or even a story about Barack Obama’s unique youth, but rather it is another illustration of the slow-motion decomposition of the GOP. The party, having lost its principles, its confidence, its courage, and then having lost an election, now experiences what it is to lose its mind, too, while it slips into the ash heap with other novelties.
The conduct of the Republicans in Congress since January has been astonishingly frail, as if the party had lost immunities to race-baiters like Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich, to liars like John Ensign and Mark Sanford, to yammerers like Eric Cantor and Michele Bachmann, to the goofily vain like Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, and Mike Huckabee.
The party has wasted away to the point where opportunistic eruptions like the birthers and much worse are natural sorrows. Republican incoherence didn’t begin with Mombasa. There is logic to the closing down of a great political party that has abandoned its own greatness to cheer on churls. Perhaps what appears terminal cowardice is only venality; perhaps what sounds like a death rattle is only the wrinkled ranting of crones in the Senate; perhaps the polls showing the Republican brand not as well regarded as Drano are just outliers. Perhaps, too, like miscreant HAL 9000, the GOP is warming up to sing, “Daisy, Daisy.”
*******
John Batchelor is radio host of the John Batchelor Show in New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
The coterie are like school children can’t be honest and can’t be different.
Does Batchelor think that he, Ingraham, Medved, Boortz, Coulter, Hewitt are going to find an eager audience with people who are NOR birthers? If these guys lose folks that are considered “birthers” they will have no audience at all! NO one will read them and they will fall into ignominious penury.
FROM THE ARTICLE: “the party had lost immunities to race-baiters like Limbaugh..”
guitarplayer, in posting a comment, it’s best to put what you take from an article in quotation marks or otherwise identify it as a quote or you will get responses from FReepers who didn’t read or see that which you quote.
Yes, Jonathon Batchelor was a FreeRepublic favorite here for years when he had his show on ABC Radio.
Batchelor a lefty? Sigh. Really, do your homework. He’s anything but a lefty.
The only good thing here is that we get to rib Coulter about being on the wrong side of destiny!
It reminds me of the eggheads during impeachment, when they called Ken Starr every name in the book.
this birther mess is gonna make conservatives look bad.
Boortz, Medved, and Hewitt have great shows.
I question how he got Linda Lingle to go along with it. I mean, she’s not the most staunch conservative out there, but she doesn’t strike me as a RINO, either. Didn’t she blow him off early in the campaign (had to pick up her dry cleaning or something?)
The only thing that I can come up with is stimulus money, I imagine that Hawaii is getting a fair share of that and that must be pretty tempting for anyone, especially if they arn’t planing to compete for national office.
Are there any records of how much her state is getting, per capita, compared to say, alaska? I can guess, but I’d like real figures.
I normally do but forgot to on this one. I found it so incredulous of an accusation that it is right out of the hand book for radicals by Saul A. I apologize if anyone thought that I would make such a false statement about Rush.
No their shows are lame. Boortz has one semi interesting thing - the other too are incredibly lame.
Using your logic - supporting Sarah Palin makes us look bad. You are falling into the Obama Alinsky trap - nice job.
Wow, unbelievable panic setting in. Yes, we are all loons, nutjobs, whackos and idiots for wanting Obama to show his vault bc like McCain did last year. This ranting about birthers being nutty is getting ridiculous. The anti-birthers are showing themselves to be the truly nutty ones.
No, they are using common sense and trying to keep the party in check before it completely relegates itself into obscurity. Each day the Democrats look dumber and dumber and you wait for the GOP to pounce, only to be incredibly disappointed that the GOP is actually outdumbed themselves with this ridiculous nonsense on birthers.
And in the age old ritual around here, as soon as a conservative says one thing that goes against what a few people here believe, they are immediately labeled as liberals, etc. The idea that John Batchelor is a liberal may be one of the funniest things I’ve ever read. Last night is was attacking Coulter as liberal. Before that, O’Reilly as a liberal. Good grief. William Buckley is rolling in his grave right now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Batchelor
*I* didn’t think you made that claim, but apparently some others did and I didn’t want you as a “noob” to catch too much flack.
Go along with what? The fact is that Obama almost certainly was born in Honolulu, and state officials were stating simple truth hen they vouched for it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/27/AR2009072703114.html
“I ... have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawaii State Department of Health verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen,” Health Director Dr. Chiyome Fukino
I bet any birther 10 to 1 odds any amount of money that his BC will say birthplace “Honolulu” when revealed.
+100000000 Totally agree. It makes all conservatives look bad which is why so many conservatives like Coulter, Batchelor, American Spectator, Hot Air Pundit, American Thinker, etc are trashing on the cranks that keep hanging on to this “story”.
Disagree. Supporting Sarah Palin doesn’t make conservatives look bad...she’s a conservative. Supporting crazy ideas...that makes conservatives look bad.
I’d love to hear Dennis Praeger on this topic, he’s about as level headed as they get and I’m guessing he thinks it’s complete crap what the birthers are doing. I don’t know for sure, but that’s my guess. Even Lou Dobbs, who casually mentioned the birthers the other day, still believes B.O. is a citizen (granted, he wants B.O. to show a long form certificate but he doesn’t believe B.O. was born in Kenya or wherever).
Demonize your opponents like Alinsky said. Sarah Palin is getting the same treatment as the birthers. Ridicule her etc . The “birthers” are following The Constitution.
Our problem is this is a Catch 22 to get proof. The only way is if someone has it our you get a mass defection in the military like that Sgt Cook. This smearing of the birthers is designed to head that off.
The lesser talk radio people got the screws put to them today.
‘Yes, we are all loons, nutjobs, whackos and idiots for wanting Obama to show his vault bc like McCain did last year.’ This is more than about asking for a BC. Was obama born in Honolulu?
Why is the COLB insufficient to show that he was?
false birtherisms:
- Obama was born in Kenya
- He has to have a US citizen Dad to be natural-born
- His COLB is a proven forgery
- “we dont know anything about him”
These are all untrue.
It’s clear it’s become a conspiracy theory, taking on the set of beliefs immune to logical analysis.
And when his BC shows he was born in Honolulu on Aug 4, 1961, just like his official bio says. ... then what?
His birthplace is only part of the issue. The issue is whether or not he is an natural born citizen. He could be born in Hawaii and still not be an NBC. But this goes beyond even the NBC issue, we want to know why Obama is spending millions to avoid showing his vault bc, and why he even rescinded the orders of a soldier in order to avoid having to prove his eligibility in court. And there are several more soldiers ready and willing to file the same suit. Is he going to rescind their orders too, and maybe thousands more after them, when he could end this all either proving his elibility in court or just showing the vault bc to the public.
Something very rotten is going on here.
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