Answering the Critics: Why “Birtherism” Won’t Go Away

Teo Bear over at TheBirthers.org recently claimed Slate.com’s David Weigel as “Obot of the Month.” On the same page, Teo Bear linked to a posting by Mr. Weigel from Wednesday in which he questions: “Why is Donald Trump pandering to Republicans who think Obama wasn’t born in the United States?”

As I’ve done with Politico and TheGreenPapers.com, so, too, will I now critique Mr. Weigel’s latest posting. He brings up some interesting points that I think are worth a response, and, frankly, he’s been kind enough to give me a couple of honorable mentions in the past (e.g.: all press is good press!).

Why won’t birtherism go away? The standard answer is this: because Barack Obama won’t release proof of his citizenship. Sorry, no dice: He did release proof of his citizenship, in June 2008—and it helped birtherism go mainstream.

Off the top, the “real” answer — from someone who’s been questioning Mr. Obama’s eligibility since October, 2008 (that might qualify me for something, dunno) — is somewhat more complicated. More shortly.

There were attempts to prove, via the work of amateurs with pen names, that the Certificate of Live Birth that Team Obama had put online was a forgery worthy of MI-6 or Clifford Irving. There were complicated legal theories about how Obama couldn’t be a citizen even if he was midwifed by Betsy Ross, because his deadbeat dad had saddled the future president with British citizenship. And most of this happened before Obama was sworn in, when a stupid person could hope that the Supreme Court would nix the inauguration.

In reality, both FactCheck and FightTheSmears have already admitted that Mr. Obama was a British citizen at birth; they simply dismiss the idea that this “at birth” heritage has nothing to do with his eligibility as an adult.

I disagree with their sentiment; again, more shortly.

So why won’t birtherism go away? After all, lots of crackpot movements and theories go away. The all-wars-are-for-oil side of the left-wing anti-war movement shrunk to fit a pencil case after Obama was elected. Glenn Beck’s ratings surged high enough to get him two unofficial biographies and the covers of Time and Fortune, and now they’re sagging so low that Fox News is hinting it may drop him. Once some obsession or movement either wins or loses all hope of winning, its adherents find other things to do.

He’s beginning to think about swerving into the truth on this one.

Here’s a hint: The only “statute of limitations,” as it were, on someone being eligible for the presidency is when they’re out of office.

But birtherism is with us, now more than ever. It used to be odd and unprofessional to ask a politician whether he had any doubts about the president’s American birth. It was in the “kook question” category. There’s theoretically nothing stopping a reporter from raising her hand at a press conference and asking a presidential candidate whether, say, he thinks the Bilderberg Group engineered the financial crisis so its members could buy up foreclosed homes and turn them into meth labs. A question about Obama’s birth certificate used to be in that same category. Now it isn’t.

The Bilderbergs, the Freemasons and the like being involved in one scenario or another can never be 100% proven, hence why those lines of thinking tend to move towards the background over time.

However, eligibility can be 100% proven at any time.

Also, when did it become “odd and unprofessional to ask a politician whether he had any doubts about the president’s American birth?”

Maybe only when the questioner is afraid of being intimidated and/or someone has something to hide? And since when are questions of authority figures a bad thing?

Is this unfair? Trump—whose campaign may qualify as a massive, “I’m Still Here” publicity stunt—is responsible for the sudden acceptability of the question. On The View, he reminded viewers that he went to “the best schools,” so he knew that documents are forged all the time, and he didn’t trust what he’d heard about Obama. Even after Tuesday, when he finally released a scan of his 1946 birth certificate to ABC News, that claim hung in the air. It echoed what some birthers still say; it gave them wider uncritical media exposure than they’d gotten since Lou Dobbs left CNN.

It’s not a bad question, and it can be factually answered. And that’s all that most (perhaps not “all”) of those who question Mr. Obama’s eligibility want (I won’t deny that there are those who will never be satisfied no matter what the proof, nor will I deny those who have a racial bias — those outliers will always exist).

One reason Trump has been able to do this is that two schools of birtherism have developed since 2008, and one of them has become a surprisingly comfortable place for conservatives to lounge. There have always been Orthodox Birthers. They start with the belief that Obama cannot be eligible for the presidency. They trust evidence they find online—an erroneous report about “Obama’s grandmother” saying he was born in Kenya, for example—which stays online forever, just like amateur diagnostic reports of how crashing planes couldn’t possibly have brought down the Twin Towers. If that evidence is challenged, they look to theories about what the founders thought “natural born citizenship” meant. Phil Berg, the attorney who filed the first birther lawsuits and who held a “March on Washington” in 2010, says Obama lost his citizenship because a school form from Indonesia calls him Indonesian. Another theory says Obama can’t be president because his father was Kenyan and that made his son a British citizen by default. (This theory would disqualify Trump, whose mother was Scottish.)

Two things:

1. 9/11 could simply have been an issue where the World Trade Center towers would not have passed a legitimate building inspection. You know, Occam’s Razor? Sometimes defined as, “the simplest explanation tends to be the most right one?”
2. Mr. Trump’s mother was apparently naturalized as an American citizen 4 years prior to Donald’s birth (see image, below). Mr. Obama’s father was apparently never naturalized as an American citizen.

What Trump is embracing … is Reform Birtherism. It’s deductive. “There’s something on that birth certificate that he doesn’t like,” said Trump last week. “I don’t know what is on the document,” said Corsi in 2009. The truth is unknowable, because Obama is hiding something about his birth documents.

…and there’s something wrong with wanting to know what’s on the actual document, if it, in fact, exists?

This is all obtuse, because unless the state of Hawaii has issued a false document and the Honolulu Advertiser and other media were defrauded when they printed Obama’s 1961 birth announcement, there’s more proof of his origins than there is proof of most things. If the president lost his original paper certificate at some point, he’s in the same boat as Greta Van Susteren, who confessed as much in an interview with Trump.

Three things:

1. The great State of Hawaii has never claimed (and, by law, they cannot claim to anyone who has not demonstrated sufficient evidence to know) to have issued any sort of paperwork for Mr. Obama; they’ve only ever claimed to have his “vital records” on file at the Department of Health. Therefore, any images of alleged documents shown online cannot be proven to have come from the Hawaiian Department of Health … because apparently someone lost the receipt (that would otherwise show evidence of procurement)!
2. The only thing a birth announcement in a newspaper proves is that, at some point in time, someone called up that newspaper and said that a certain individual was born.
3. If Mr. Obama lost his original birth certificate, then he should be able to simply make a request from Hawaii’s Department of Health for a replacement. That’s how we roll here in Georgia; I can only imagine that’s how other States work, too — pay a fee and get a copy of the original birth certificate.

So why bring this up? If Trump is actually running for president, he’s doing it because polling indicates that at least 27 percent of Republicans have doubts about Obama’s origins. There are probably going to be more Republicans primary voters who have these doubts than think abortion should be illegal. So being a Reform Birther is saying you’re in solidarity with state legislators who are demanding birth certificates from the next presidential candidates.

Maybe because Mr. Trump wants to know? And is there a problem being in league with approximately 11 States (including my own Georgia) who currently have eligibility initiatives underway?

This is pretty pathetic, even for a presidential campaign. Those legislators, and the voters they’re pandering to, don’t really know what they’re talking about. Mae Beavers, a Tennessee state senator, has introduced a bill that would require a “long-form birth certificate” from 2012 candidates. She appeared on a radio show to discuss it and was asked what a “long-form birth certificate” was. She didn’t know; she had just modeled the bill after what other states had done.

While it is true that there is much ignorance on the issue, if a proper survey of State legislators were taken, just because one is ignorant doesn’t mean that all are.

Furthermore, the requirements for the presidency has been in the Constitution from day one of its existence; just because the American people are only now taking certain parts of it seriously enough to want it enforced doesn’t mean that such ignorance delegitimizes the question.

It’s actually the other way around.

What does someone like Pawlenty have to gain when he dismisses all of this? Quite a lot, actually. Millions of Republicans may doubt Obama’s citizenship—but millions more don’t, or don’t care. Many of the Republicans who do have doubts don’t actually know or think that Obama should be kicked out of office on a technicality.

What does it matter what Mr. Pawlenty has to say about the eligibility issue? Do you only agree/approve of him because he dismisses the eligibility issue? Perhaps you should start asking why he does dismiss the issue! What if he were to take the issue on full-force the way Mr. Trump has?

The Republicans who can shape elite opinion … hate even thinking about this. If an investigation proved that Obama had gotten into Columbia and Harvard Law with mediocre grades, he might only win as many presidential elections as George W. Bush. Lots of Republicans think that birtherism is a good way for the White House to make their party look crazy.

Really? Do you really want to go down this path (apparently you do because you just did)? So, I guess we should just strike out Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5 of the Constitution because … it’s too controversial. It would make someone look bad.

Who’s fooling whom?

With his definitive statement, Pawlenty appeals to those Republicans. He appeals to the political media, too. He’s jumped one of the lowest bars in politics—but he’s jumped it, and some other Republicans still haven’t, or won’t. Pawlenty wins a stamp of approval—not crazy!—that’s incredibly easy to earn. Soon some other candidates will go for that stamp. They have a lot of time. The birthers aren’t going anywhere.

Well, it’s settled! If you want to be taken seriously by those with their rhetorical/literal noses in the air, don’t question Obama’s origins. That’s just crazy. You’ll be labeled a birther and nobody will take you seriously — at least not the people that count.

Now the only question is which part of the Constitution is the next part that will be labeled as too controversial to question.

Maybe the First Amendment? Maybe that really pesky Second Amendment? While we’re at it, that Fifth Amendment gets in the way of things from time to time, and especially that Tenth Amendment. Heck, we have the pejorative “Tenthers” to crush those discussions.

Let me finish by saying the following. We don’t know if a birth certificate is enough to legitimize a candidate for the presidency; the Constitution doesn’t delve into enforcing eligibility. And since we know that Mr. Obama was a British subject, at birth, we don’t know conclusively whether or not this has presidential bearings.

Mr. Weigel is doing an excellent job of questioning why Mr. Trump is taking on the eligibility issue. Unfortunately, as I’ve just demonstrated, Mr. Weigel is a wee bit too biased against the eligibility question to understand why we will continue to question.

Why do we question? Why won’t we go away? Why are news anchors willingly allowing Mr. Trump on air to continually bring up these questions?

It’s really simple.

A definitive answer, while quite easily producible, has never been given.

And therein lies the crux of the situation. We can know beyond the shadow of a doubt whether or not Mr. Obama is presidentially eligible. He simply refuses to show his long-form birth certificate — the document that would reveal enough details that would go a long way in verifying his legitimacy as President.

-Phil

phil [at] therightsideoflife [dot] comSimilar Posts:

• Trump Releases Own Long-Form Birth Certificate
• Trump Releases Own Birth Certificate, Wants Confirmed Legal President
• Trump Embraces Birthers: On MSNBC; But Why Now?; “Eligibility Apprentice”; Eligibility Cartoon
• Birther-in-Chief Trump Poses Muslim Question; “Proud” to be a Birther
• OK State House Passes Candidate Eligibility Bill, 72-23

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