Lawsuits contesting President Obama’s birthplace have been routinely dismissed. The Supreme Court has declined to take up the issue. Hawaiian state officials have repeatedly offered to make copies of Obama’s birth certificate available (now for a fee). And mainstream GOP officials, including defrocked Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele called the issue a “distraction.” Yet the so-called “birther movement”, far from receding into the woodwork as the loony obsession of assorted kooks, cranks, and zanies, is still very much alive and well. A recent Public Policy Polling survey found that a slight majority of likely Republican primary voters think Obama was born outside the U.S. That number that has jumped during the past two years.
The screwball issue of Obama’s citizenship has even made some headway in a half dozen states. Arizona is typical. Arizona state Representative Judy Burges introduced the by now template resolution on Obama’s birth that bars presidential candidates from appearing on that state’s ballot unless they can prove they were born in the U.S. Obama was not explicitly mentioned in the bill as the target, that’s the case in the other states that have introduced similar bills too, but everyone knows it’s aimed at him. Burges’s bill was not laughed out of the legislature. It got 41 co-sponsors in the Arizona House and Senate. That’s exactly six short of the votes needed for passage.
Why the continuing obsession with this nutty issue? The answer is simple: to politically smear Obama. With the 2012 presidential elections gathering steam, the issue will loom even bigger since any GOP candidate will have to either keep silent on the issue, or at least give due deference to the movement. But that’s been the case all along. While GOP officials publicly disavow the birthers, they tacitly applaud them. This was apparent the instant then Democratic rising star Obama became a bona fide presidential candidate. The whispers, gossip and innuendos about his alleged foreign birth began with a vengeance. When Obama topped Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in the primaries, the birther movement took full flight. A survey by Research 2000 at the time found that more than half of Republicans either thought that Obama was born somewhere other than in the U.S., or had doubts about his actual birthplace.
Right-wing bloggers, websites, talk show gabbers, all of a sudden produced dummy documents that showed Obama was born somewhere other than the U.S. or accused Obama, Democratic Party officials, and Hawaiian officials of conspiring to cover up the supposed truth about Obama’s foreign birth.
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This fit in neatly with the GOP back door attack plan; and that was to plant the seed in the public mind that Obama’s was an alien, non-citizen, unpatriotic, and even anti-American. That he was a radical Trojan Horse who would subvert U.S. institutions. This wacky scenario has been played out countless times during the last two years with many different variations, but always playing on the suspicion that Obama is an alien presence in the White House.
The birthers have gotten an added boost, not just from the GOP’s wink and nod, but from the mainstream media and even some Democratic politicians. By spending endless time debunking the lie about his foreign birth, they have conferred a kind of quasi legitimacy on the movement. In other words, far from being an amusing object of crackpot derision, Obama’s birth certificate is an issue that is seen as meriting discussion even debate. Burges’s bill in the Arizona legislature almost certainly will be the focus of intense media interest, especially if it appears that it has a real chance of passing.
Meawhile, the birthers have moved from the crude and snide attacks on the birth certificate publicly released by the White House and Hawaiian officials. In 2008, the Obama administration released a “certification of live birth,” a shorter document that carries the same legal weight as the long one. But Burges’s bill calls for “an original long certificate as the only valid document that “proves” actual birth in the place claimed.
It must contain the physician’s original signature and that of the witnesses to the birth as well as time, date and place and hospital, all accompanied by original documents. The certificate released by Obama would not pass the Arizona’s bill’s muster. Even if it did, there’s little likelihood it would be enough to make the issue go away for the millions who revel in the myth that Obama is an alien subversive.
The birther movement is another political weapon, as offbeat as it is, in the GOP’s arsenal of below the belt tactics to discredit Obama, while at the same time making it appear that the party is above dishing out that kind of dirt, and risk being typed as a crackpot party. The birthers won’t go quietly into the night, facts, or no facts. The Public Policy Survey is ample proof of that.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts national Capitol Hill broadcast radio talk show on KTYM Radio Los Angeles and WFAX Radio Washington D.C. streamed on ktym.com and wfax.com and internet TV broadcast on thehutchinsonreportnews.com. Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
