Birthers Get a Tea Party Welcome

The Tea Party Convention has managed to put a conservative face on a movement that, if not quite mainstream, is at least respectable. That changed with one long dumb speech from WorldNetDaily chief Joseph Farah, one of the leaders of the so-called Birther movement.

Click here for all of Jonathan Kay's posts from the Tea Party convention in Nashville.

Aside from Tom Tancredo's creepy outburst last night about the education level of Obama voters, the Tea Party Convention in Nashville has gone more or less on script -- putting a conservative face on a movement that, if not quite mainstream, is at least respectable.

That just changed with one long dumb speech from WorldNetDaily chief Joseph Farah, one of the leaders of the so-called Birther movement.

Farah started fine -- heaping praise on the constitution, and urging America's leaders to be faithful to it. He ended well, too, with a stirring exhortation to "take the offense in this struggle."

But these flourishes were merely the bread in a lunacy sandwich -- the filling of which were 10 solid minutes implicitly questioning whether Barack Obama is an American citizen. In 2012, he declared, every single election lawn sign should say: Show me the birth certificate.

It's a silly line of attack against Obama -- one that's become the stuff of parody on late night cable shows. Even Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck have turned their back on the Birthers. Yet Farah's cheap shots on this subject got big ovations. Message for the cameras: This is a room full of conspiracy theorists.

What's worse, Farah wrapped up his Birther nonsense in Jesus' garb, going on in semi-satiric detail about how the Bible documents Jesus' lineage in a way that Obama cannot.

"I'm a follower of Jesus Christ!" Farah exclaimed to much applause. That's fine. America has a lot of time for the devout. For the paranoid, less so.