Posted on 07/31/2009 7:35:42 AM PDT by shortstop
An Internet controversy that raged during the presidential campaign has resurfaced in recent weeks, posing more of a threat to Republicans than the intended target, President Barack Obama.
The "birther" movement, as it's called, claims that Obama was not born in Hawaii, but Kenya or Indonesia and therefore is not eligible to be president. The birth certificate that has been released and authenticated by numerous Hawaii state officials is a fraud, they say, and isn't the original anyway.
But after months in relative obscurity, the birthers have muscled their way onto the national stage:
• 11 Republican legislators have endorsed a bill that would require future presidential candidates to submit birth certificates to prove their citizenship.
• The stream of dead-end birther lawsuits took a new twist when the Army rescinded a soldier's deployment orders after he sued on grounds that the orders weren't proper because Obama isn't really commander in chief.
• CNN's Lou Dobbs set the world of political pundits atwitter with comments last week that though he believes Obama is a Hawaii resident, his refusal to provide a copy of the original birth certificate raises "questions."
• Monday, for at least the third time in recent weeks, and in the midst of a national debate over health care, the Obama birth certificate issue was raised during the daily White House press briefing, to the increasing irritation of press secretary Robert Gibbs.
The St. Petersburg Times' fact-checking Web site PolitiFact.com has examined this issue several times over the past year and found a mountain of evidence that proves Obama was born in Honolulu: the birth certificate, birth announcements in the archives of two Honolulu newspapers, and remarks, most recently Monday, from the director of Hawaii's Department of Health, who released a statement saying he had "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."
Yet, the debate rages. And even as conservative flame-throwers such as Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter dismiss the birthers as nutty conspiracy theorists with a made-up controversy, their rising voice is hard to dismiss, especially for Republicans.
The group represents at least a component of the conservative constituency. Check out the YouTube video — seen by nearly 1 million people — of a town hall meeting hosted by U.S. Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del. A woman in the audience hijacks the event by standing up and yelling, "Why are you people ignoring his birth certificate?"
Many in the audience erupt in applause and shout support as the woman, clutching her birth certificate and a small American flag, yells, "He is NOT an American citizen! He is a citizen of Kenya. … I want my country back!"
Castle, a moderate Republican, tries to dismiss her, saying, "He's a citizen of the United States." The crowd turns on him with boos and catcalls. The woman then rouses the audience to stand and say the Pledge of Allegiance. Castle obliges. "You probably don't even know the words," one audience member taunts.
For a minority party looking to regain Congress, all this puts many Republican leaders in an uncomfortable spot. Do they side with the birthers and risk being labeled by the mainstream as kooks, or do they distance themselves from the birthers and risk losing a strong, vocal and increasingly confrontational constituency?
Even riding the middle ground has proven treacherous.
U.S. Rep. Bill Posey, the Melbourne-area lawmaker who introduced the bill requiring presidential candidates to submit their birth certificates, is catching heat.
A constituent e-mailed him wanting to know why he voted for a resolution Monday celebrating the 50th anniversary of Hawaiian statehood, which also recognized it as Obama's birthplace.
"I replied that this is not about Obama and it's not about me. It's about the Constitution," Posey said of his legislation, which has made him a hero to some and the butt of jokes on late-night TV.
Posey said the intent has been misunderstood and overblown. He said questions have been raised over the years about the birth credentials of several candidates and he merely wanted to settle the controversies.
When asked if he personally had any disbelief that Obama was born in Hawaii, he said, "I'm just not getting into the weeds. My point is, it doesn't matter. I just voted for a resolution yesterday."
It's a no-win situation for Republicans legislators, said Kathryn Olmsted, professor of history at the University of California, Davis, and author of Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11.
"They're damned if they do and damned if they don't," said Olmsted. "If they embrace the birthers, then they risk losing mainstream credibility. They don't want to look ridiculous, or to be diverted from real, substantive issues of disagreement with the Obama administration. But if they condemn the birthers, then they risk alienating a vocal part of the party base.",p>
Even conservative political pundits are divided. Though some, such as Rush Limbaugh, have fueled the birthers' cause — "Barack Obama has yet to have to prove he's a citizen," Limbaugh said last month — other conservatives such as O'Reilly and Coulter have repeatedly and forcefully denounced it.
At the least, the birthers have proven irritating to some Republicans who say it's costing the party credibility and distracting them from their message.
"There's a time in the process for that discussion to take place, and that time has long passed," said Jim Greer, chair of Florida's Republican Party. "Talking about a birth certificate is not going to get the American voters to embrace the Republican philosophy of government."
Democratic leaders faced similar dilemmas dealing with liberals who believed George W. Bush stole the presidential election in 2000, as well as with conspiracy theorists who believed the Bush administration had a hand in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Larry Sabato, professor of politics at the University of Virginia, likened the political situation posed by the birthers to that of the conservative John Birch Society in the 1960s. Though the group once enjoyed acceptance in conservative circles, many Republicans cut ties with the Birchers due to their increasingly extremist views that the federal government was filled with Communists, including Republican President Dwight Eisenhower.
Republicans need to follow their predecessors' lead with the birthers, Sabato said, or risk alienating politically necessary moderates in and out of the party. "It's poisoning the bloodstream of their party," he said. "If they lose some nutcases, all the better."
Times staff writer Alex Leary contributed to this report.
Here's the view from "the dark side."
Show me the actual birth certificate! And while you are at it, I want to see your records from Puonahou HS, Occidental College, Columbia, Harvard Law School as well as all the lost records from your stellar career as an Illinois political thug.
That old “conservative” newspaper worried about the Republicans lol
It's a simple thing to put to rest. I have a passport and a birth certificate. I can produce them at my house in a matter of minutes. I have not spent a million dollars to either acquire them...or to hide them.
This is not a unreasonable thing to ask for since being a "natural born citizen" of the US is a constitutional requirement for the job of President. It's not hateful, and it's not racist.
Proving that you are should be an honor.
Yet Obama cannot and will not produce either. Why?
THE AUDACITY OF TRUTH ABOUT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA'S UPBRINGING
Somehow, liberals think you can put out a fire by pouring gasoline on it. That's exactly what they're doing and I'm gonna get some marshmallows and enjoy it.
Remarkable. Remarkable! Look at the proliferation of these articles in the SRM
A nationwide anti”birther” campaign is in full swing.
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win.”
— Mahatma Gandhi
“FREE THE LONG FORM!”
Huh, according to this, it is causing a split in the Pubbies. If that’s so, why would any Rat NOT want to egg that on? Obama would spoil the party if he manned up and just showed the durn thing.
I’m not a “birther,” but the only question I want answered is why did the Thug on Day One sign an Executive Order sealing his birth and school records?
ridiculous. just because someone isn’t on board the birther
express doesn’t mean they aren’t going to oppose the One,
and all his works, and all his pomps, forever and ever.
dems who believe that are kidding themselves.
For a population used to OJ Simpson, Jon-Benet Ramsay, Natalie Holloway, Drew Peterson, and all the rest, I think people will eagerly pop their popcorn and wait the the case to unfold so that they can watch the criminal investigation unfold. We are now in the realm of entertainment -- and that is really bad for Obama.
Proving that if you look from the right angle, even a molehill can seem like a mountain. Repeating the same thing 10 times does not increase the evidence 10-fold, especially if it is shaky evidence.
I think we do need to be careful not to bite other conservatives’ heads off about this issue. The fault lines are in several places. Some, frankly, are skeptical that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii and would be satisfied to gain acceptable proof that he was. Others look at legal technicalities like parentage and precedent from the founding fathers, that would push the issue beyond being born in Hawaii. Yet others are disgusted that he isn’t being transparent like he promised and see it as a character issue. Still more think there’s something else hiding in the facts that would be real useful to know.
We can’t let this split conservatives against each other. We can virtually all agree that Obama is a Bad Thing and we need to get him out, whether by impeachment or not being re-elected.
My guess is, whatever they are, they are very enlightening about Barry and who he really is...and so they continue to keep records sealed (or destroyed) and they go to great lengths to villify the searchers, and hide the truth.
Yeah, the St. Pete Times hopes, yearns, and waits for this to cause trouble to Republicans.
This is the angle that interests me. Baraq al-Husseini and his buds have got to know that hiding the BC and all those other records will just increase the suspicion that they contain something worth hiding. They can't all have forgotten Nixon this soon.
The Liberals don’t get it—all the birthers want is the long form birth certificate—show it the whole thing goes away. Simple. Sealing the records looks like Obama has something to hide. All they want is the truth—if he’s an American—prove it and that will be that. Maybe there is some other reason he has sealed his records.
I can’t see how the Birther movement is good for the country, the Republican Party, or the conservative movement. Yet I’m open to being convinced. In my view the main reasons I think the birthers are off-base are: (1) its reasonable for any President to refuse to set a precedent that he will obey any and all demands placed upon him by groups of private citizens, e.g. the demand to release an original birth certificate, (2)there is evidence other than the birth certificate for him being born in Hawaii — e.g. the newspaper birth announcement is pretty hard to refute.
Lets focus on more salient topics, please — like Obama’s socialist agenda.
It is not about wheather he is a ‘citizen’. It’s the ‘natural born’ part that folks want to know about. It’s about the Constitution and fufilling the requirements as set forth in that document.
So why doesn't Obama simply authorize the State of Hawaii to produce a certified copy of his original birth certificate? I can come up with only two logical explanations. Either:
1. Obama wants to keep the controversy alive as a straw man to distract from any of a number of real issues about his background, such as how a poor college student managed to take a summer trip to Pakistan when American citizens were not being allowed to travel there.
2. There is something in the birth certificate that is contrary to his published story, such as a different father or that his parents were not married.
The MSM tried to come up with a variety of contradictory reasons to explain why Obama cannot release a certified copy of his original birth certificate, and has finally settled on "He doesn't have to." Lou Dobbs appears to be the only MSM journalist that has the gall to ask, "Why doesn't he just release it?"
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