Birthers and 2012

OK, here we go again. I really don’t want to give this whole birther thingy too much press (not that my little site is out in front) but I feel I have to chime in on occasion.  As I have previously posted, I am not a birther, I believe that President Obama was born in Hawaii and is a US citizen, eligible to be POTUS according to the 14th Amendment.

However, if I had the opportunity to talk with the “first dude” I would gently suggest to him that he release the original certificate and be done with it. But I also have a feeling the release of the original BC wouldn’t satisfy the most ardent birthers out there. But it is kind of snotty of the President to thumb his nose at the many people who do have questions.

But the root of my anti-birther (for lack of better term) feelings is the whole conspiracy theory. The number of people that it would take to pull this off boggles my mind. If you are part of the birther movement I think if you really sat down and thought about it you would come to realize the magnitude of what needed to be done to pull this off.  It would take 100s, if not 1000s, to make this come together. In that mix of conspirators, there is going to be one person who is going to trip up, or feel slighted somehow, or get a bug in their britches, and spill the beans.

I am not a fan of Politico, but Ben Smith and Byron Tau have put together a primer on the evolution of the birther movement. Strange as it might seem, this whole thing didn’t get started by some right-wing crazy sitting in his basement. It was started by folks who supported Clinton for President back in 2008.

If you haven’t been trolling the fever swamps of online conspiracy sites or opening those emails from Uncle Larry, you might wonder: Where did this idea come from? Who started it? And is there a grain of truth there?

The answer lies in Democratic, not Republican politics, and the bitter, exhausting spring of 2008. At the time, the Democratic presidential primary was slipping away from Hillary Clinton and some of her most passionate supporters grasped for some, anything that would deal a final reversal to Barack Obama. (Source: Politico)

So we conservatives don’t have the market cornered on this whole birther thing. One of the first to bring the birther question up was Phil Berg, a Pennsylvania lawyer who had spent “previous years accusing President George W. Bush of complicity in the Sept 11 attack.”

The continual hammering at this subject has me concerned when I think about the divide within the Republican Party over this issue and the fight for the independent voters in 2012. Obama and his crew are media savvy (plus the MSM is in the tank for him) enough to reverse the tide and bring this back against any Republican candidate. Even Michelle Bachmann and Mitt Romney, who are on record as saying enough with this birther talk, will have to overcome this. Romney, Bachmann, and Palin have enough issues the press can cover (real and made up) without having to have this hanging around their necks. Many of the Independent voters we have been able to bring back to the fold would certainly be scared away if this birther talk continues.  This could very well cost us the election in 2012.

The whole birther movement is spinning their wheels. Even if the astronomical odds came in and Obama was not a native son, the whole thing would take years to finish in court. Meanwhile, it is quite possible we’ll have lost a Presidential election. I don’t ever want to contemplate what it would mean if Obama were not eligible, but I also don’t want to contemplate another four years of him as President. I say we concentrate our efforts at removing the guy in 2012, then if there is enough birther smoke out there, go after him, bury his a$$, finish the progressive party forever, and get on with the job of putting this country back in its rightful place as the leader of the free world.

I think the damage that could be done to this country would be much more severe if he discovered to not be eligible while he serves than if the discovery were made after he has served his one and only term.  There is no question that if it were determined he was not eligible the amount of damage done would be high regardless of when the issue was completely resolved. But if this waits until he is out of office in late Jan 2013, the mess to clean up would be administrative. A daunting task, no doubt. But if he were impeached over this the uproar would create a rift so large that we would never be the same country ever again. If you think the rhetoric is ugly now, imagine what it would be like during the impeachment proceedings.