Birtherism Is A Winning Political Issue? Gimmie A Break!

by John Hawkins | February 8, 2010 12:48 pm

Joseph Farah from WorldNetDaily[1] and Andrew Breitbart[2] got into an argument at the Nashville Tea Party Convention about the birther issue. Not a shock there. But, something Joseph Farah said needs to be rebutted[3]:

I told Farah that his speech was getting negative attention already, and that Breitbart, who’d taken the stage after him, had criticized the “birther” parts of the speech. Farah shook his head and walked over to Breitbart in what seemed like an attempt to debunk my question.

“Andrew is my friend,” said Farah. “He has the right to disagree, and he has the right to say anything to a socialist newspaper that he wants. And if he wants to criticize his friend to you, and he’s dumb enough to do that…”

Breitbart raised his eyebrows. “I’m dumb to do what?”

“Criticize your friend to this socialist newspaper.”

“I was talking to her,” said Breitbart, pointing to Schilling. “I was talking to you. And I was saying that I disagreed on the birther stuff.”

“OK, well, did you know that Dave Weigel from The Washington Independent was”—

“I was talking to her,” said Breitbart. “She was asking me if I thought it was to bring it up, and I said, no. We have a lot of strong arguments to be making, and that is a primary argument. That is an argument for the primaries that did not take hold. The arguments that these people right here are making are substantive arguments. The elections in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts were all won not on birther, but on substance. And to apply to this group of people the concept that they’re all obsessed with the birth certificate, when it’s not a winning issue—”

“It is a winning issue!”

“It’s not a winning issue.”

I’m not going to go through the whole birther argument again[4]. At this point, I’ll just say that Obama has released a valid Certificate of Live Birth given to him by the state of Hawaii and it lists his birth place as Honolulu. If that’s not enough to convince you he was born in the USA, nothing else I say is probably going to do it either.

But, what I do want to get into is the idea that birtherism is a “winning issue.”

You know what? It may be a winning traffic issue for WorldnetDaily, but the idea that it’s a winning political issue is ridiculous.

Whatever you believe on the birther issue, here’s the reality of it: There’s a small, hardcore element on the right that buys into the idea that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the US and really cares about the issue.

Then, there’s a significantly larger group of people on the Right who don’t like Obama, believe he lies about everything, and think if there’s smoke, there’s probably fire. So, they may believe that he wasn’t born in Hawaii, but it’s not a big issue for them one way or the other. Now, at the end of the day, are any of these people voting on the issue? Maybe a small, small percentage of the hardcore group, but that’s it.

In fact, to the best of my knowledge, although there have been a few Republicans who’ve come across like they’re open to the idea that Obama wasn’t born in the US, there’s not a single Republican politican in DC who’s willing to go on the record and flat out say that he doesn’t believe that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. So obviously, they don’t see any validity or political gain to be had there.

On the other hand, of course, liberals think it’s a crazy conspiracy theory — but, they’re not alone. A large percentage of the people on the left, on the right, and in the center — all not only believe that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, they believe it’s ridiculous and conspiratorial to say otherwise.

Maybe that’s because the people beating this drum the hardest:  –: like Jerome Corsi and Joseph Farah– : spent years telling Americans that George Bush was going to merge the United States with Canada and Mexico to form a North American Union with an Amero currency[5]. All of us remember when that happened, don’t we? Oh wait, that was one of the dumbest conspiracy theories I’ve ever heard.

Long story short: birtherism has no place at conservative events or political campaigns and Republican politicians would be very wise to steer clear of it as much as possible.

Endnotes:
  1. WorldNetDaily: http://www.wnd.com/
  2. Andrew Breitbart: http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/
  3. something Joseph Farah said needs to be rebutted: http://hotair.com/archives/2010/02/06/breitbart-farah-argue-birtherism-at-tea-party-convention/
  4. birther argument again: https://rightwingnews1.wpenginepowered.com/mt331/2009/06/my_latest_townhall_column_3_re.php
  5. telling Americans that George Bush was going to merge the United States with Canada and Mexico to form a North American Union with an Amero currency: https://rightwingnews1.wpenginepowered.com/mt331/2008/11/declaring_victory_over_the_nor.php

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