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.
Thanks for the ping!
Rand Paul major announcement: Rand Paul from Kentucky running for U.S. Senate as a Republican. (Neil Cavuto). NOW.
Watching Rand Paul now on Cavuto. He’s doing well so far!
“The point is, this supposed document is out there and is being analyzed to death and will ultimately be certified one way or the other by experts.”
Coincidence that Hillary is scheduled to head to Nairobi soon? The pressing world power of Kenya must need attention.
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