Posted on 08/04/2009 10:10:56 AM PDT by Chi-townChief
In case you haven't heard, President Obama is a member of a secret Kenyan terrorist cell who is scheming to dispatch waves of government bureaucrats to tell grandmas and grandpas how to off themselves.
Such is the intellectual weight of a segment of the Republican Party these days.
Or as one commentator recently put it, the GOP has decided "to double down on crazy."
We're talking about two controversies here, one involving the so-called birther movement, which questions the citizenship of the president; the other involving mandatory "end-of-life" counseling that's supposedly part of the president's health care plan.
The controversies are such nonsense that we hesitate to discuss them at all. But both issues, like some crazed killer at the end of a slasher movie, just won't die. And they speak to a broader, troubling trend within the GOP.
To recap, briefly:
The birther movement questions whether President Obama was born in the United States, and thus legitimately elected president. His birth certificate and every piece of credible evidence show he was born in Hawaii. But for the folks in the birther movement, no piece of evidence is ever enough.
What's more, for some in the movement, the questions about Obama's citizenship lead to greater suspicions about him, including whether he's secretly an agent for a foreign government, sort of like Laurence Harvey in the 1962 movie thriller, "The Manchurian Candidate."
We're not making this up.
The mandatory "end-of-life" counseling controversy is not a direct attack on the president but effectively paints his and the Democrats' health care proposal as a secret plan to peddle suicide to senior citizens.
Some commentators, led by Betsy McCaughey, the former lieutenant governor of New York, hit the airwaves recently to claim that under the Obama plan, people enrolled in Medicare would be required to submit to counseling every five years that would tell them how to end their lives sooner.
In fact, the bill requires Medicare to cover the costs of voluntary advice sessions for seniors who want to find out about living wills, powers of attorney, health care proxies and similar issues. We believe these planning steps are good things, not only for seniors, but for their families.
The AARP thinks so too. It lobbied for the provision. And the last time we checked, the AARP isn't into killing off its membership.
Both the "end-of-life" critics and the birther movement should be part of the lunatic fringe, but they've found a home in the GOP.
Instead of shunning them, some elected Republican officials and party standard bearers have embraced them. The left has its share of loonies, too, but hasn't given them this sort of bear hug.
On the issue of Obama's citizenship, several Republican congressman have signed on to a bill that would require presidential candidates to produce a copy of their birth certificates.
This is nothing but a sop to the birther movement.
On the health care front, former Republican Sen. Fred Thompson featured McCaughey on his radio show, and from there, her "end-of-life" comments caught fire, spreading quickly to Sean Hannity's and Rush Limbaugh's programs, among other conservative outlets.
The GOP needs to be a vigorous, substantive party. It must try to win back voters with the strength, not the scariness, of its ideas.
When elements of the party embrace such claptrap, it does the GOP itself -- and the country -- no favors.
So they shriek louder and louder the more evidence and more determined we clearly get to get to the bottom of this.
One sign that the old msm has “died” and is now the living dead zombie media or ldzm.
BTW, my “great article” was directed to the one linked in comment 7, not the steaming pile from the Chicago rag...
so right. the article makes that sound like some bizzare demand. broad smear assault. throw it all in and hope everything gets tainted.
Man! We just get through 8 years of despotic rule by a sock-puppet of big-oil, Haliburton, Diebold, and the eeevil defense industrial complex who was personally wiretapping kindergarteners and monitor all overdue library books in a sinister plot to hide his dynamiting of the levees in New Orleans (which was all just a way of getting rid of the excess explosives left over after he rigged the World Trade Center to explode) and now we find out that some people are saying that the great and omnipotent Obama might have a questionable past? I mean, come on! after we proved his past relationships with Jermiah Wright and Bill Ayers were all a minsunderstanding and that those people changed into different people who were not the people Obama knew, these crazy nuts are STILL looking for Obama's real history? Geeze.
The press was totally silent on the brave patriots who proved that Bush was housing the frozen brain of Hitler in his head, thank heavens they finally woke up to point out the nuts who would question Obama.
you know..I just don't see these four guys sitting up at nite worrying about the future of the GOP..
The Healthers are claiming that tapes were edited to make it “seem” like Barack Obama wants to end private medical insurance.
The Dirthers are claiming that Sarah Palin is seeking a divorce.
The Truthers insisted that “Bush Knew”.
Barack still hasn’t released his birth certificate and the Pravda Media lies, calling a COLB a BC.
I think they should keep publishing these things, the more it is out there, it might actually get people to thinking, but i doubt it.
The dems DEMANDED proof that John McC was a citizen. Now that the shoe fits the other foot, it is somehow bad?
I guess dems are anti-white, honkie racists.
The Pravda Media never mentioned the public support of the so called “anti-war” movement by Communists, Marxists, Anarchists, and antisemites.
They can go cry wolf some more. They are thoroughly discredited.
Remember when Barack Obama sued to have a Republican’s divorce proceedings made public (forcing him out of the race)?
Where was the compelling need for that?
Then where is the Birth Certificate? Why not submit it as evidence in one of the court cases asking to release it?
Wonder who they asked.
Even Barack floated that talking point.
Wahhhh they are picking on our master! WAHHHH! That is all I read here.. Bunch of knee pad wearing DOLTS!
John Barron is the Publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times.
Tom McNamee
Don Hayner
Andrew Herrmann
The MSM is in the fight of its life, desperate to prove that up is down.
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