Don't Credit Birthers for GOP Gains
Ed Morrissey today:
Breitbart is entirely correct, and perhaps even understated the case. In the earlier exchange with Schilling, she said that her boss was asking Obama to prove something rather than disprove Birtherism, to which Breitbart responded, “When has a president ever been asked to prove his citizenship?” But in fact, Obama did do just that when he released the Certification of Live Birth in June 2008, in response to an entirely different question. That may have been the first time a Presidential candidate has ever done so, and the COLB is a document that could get Obama a passport, a driver’s license, and a Social Security number. It’s all the legal proof required. If that wasn’t enough, Obama’s political opponents found contemporaneous records of his birth in the Honolulu Advertiser from August 1961.
The wins in Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts over the last three months did not come from people questioning Obama’s birthplace. They resulted from grassroots opposition to the Obama-Nancy Pelosi policy agenda. Scott Brown won the seat held by the Kennedys and their cronies for almost 60 years by pushing back hard against ObamaCare and the counterterrorism policies of the White House. If anything, the continued focus on Birtherism at these rallies undercuts the mainstream nature of the opposition to the Democratic agenda and allows the media to paint it as a paranoid mob obsessed with conspiracy theories. Not only is it not a winning issue, it will hang like an albatross around the necks of conservatives who tacitly or expressly link themselves to it.