I never understood that angle of criticism. It wouldn't have mattered anyway. Congress would have just passed an exception for President Obama. It's a pretty silly issue.
shape- i started a thread about this crap where i use the daily show clip: http://sportstwo.com/forums/showthread.php?t=144577 -the past few weeks have been awesome for the daily show with all these crazies acting up
Most "Birthers" think that since Obama isn't a born citizen he would be disqualified from the Presidency. Then the runnerup in the 2008 election would be President. Hence John McCain is President and Republicans have the White House. What they don't know is even if they're right, they're wrong. Obama could refuse to resign and it's very unlikely that the house impeaches him considering it's a dem majority. Even if they did the icing on the cake is Joe Biden becomes President and not John McCain. So they're not right about much of anything.
Actually, that is not entirely right. If this ridiculous birthing thing was true, then Obama was running as President unconstitutionally, thus his entire Cabinet would probably be yanked, and they probably would have a standing president (most likely, hate to say it, Pelosi). VERY unlikely situtation, and true, I don't think they would even want to go there b/c it would require new amendments and everything for "people who went thru the cracks."
Biden was legally elected vice president though. He wasn't technically appointed like the others. Although I did read that somewhere so perhaps my source material is wrong.
I don't care if he was born here or not. He's elected and he's my president. I ran across those photos while looking for anything that would talk about what would happen, hypothetically, if it came out Obama was really not born a US citizen.
The way I see it, this issue represents the continued growth of partisan politics in the US. It's to the point where each group won't even accept the election win of the other. The Democrats had the Florida re-count thing and this is the Republicans' equivalent.
Apples and Oranges. The dems at least had some merit to their outrage. We're talking about ballots not being counted or being counted for someone else. This is something that has not merit what so ever. It's not even partisan politics. Let's be honest, this is about his race.
That comparison makes it seem like I'm equating the two, which really wasn't my intention. One's clearly more ridiculous/meritless than the other, and this birther fiasco touches on so many socio-cultural issues that the election recount didn't. But at the end of the day, the movement isn't sustained solely by the diehard lunatics. Normally reasonable Republicans are responding to these accusations with "maybe" instead of a flat-out "no." That's the fuel that's kept this fire burning and it's definitely a result of a partisan desire to not acknowledge a Democratic election win.
I don't disagree with what you're saying. I just think the fact that he's half-black with a funny name is why this exists. I think the normal republicans know that part of their base is the South and this is where the outrage or at least the birther movement really is. To me that spells out race. I think the normal republicans get it and accept that they loss, but probably want to get as many backers as possible to help them advance their political ambitions so they refuse to take a stand on this. To be fair, dems would probably do the exact same thing. Everyone thinks about their political future.
It's not about race. When Obama was first elected, nearly half of republicans supported him. He had the opportunity to gain more support, but his words and actions have led to an opposite result.
This isn't about his decline in support which isn't racial motivated. This about a handful of republicans or I wouldn't even call them that not accepting the fact that Obama is a born citizen of the United States. The birther movement was never in support of Obama. They cannot accept him as President. They never did and never will and the sad thing is his policies have nothing to do with it.
It's tit for tat. You destroyed our guy, we'll destroy yours. But the poll numbers reveal something deeper. The public is far more conservative than liberal, nobody wants to see yet another massive spending program, and the economy really sucks and it's Obama's economy since the so-called stimulus package passed and nobody's seen any benefit from it.
You're right. The people who supported him and specifically moderate conservatives and independents and probably some conservative dems are starting to trend away from Obama right now, but those same people were probably never birthers to begin with.
I'll admit when the issue was first presented to me, my response was "maybe". That's because the unusual way the charge was addressed. If it were easy and straightforward to prove, it should have been done quickly. Instead it was dragged on with silly obfuscated answers. In fact, it's probably still "maybe" since I haven't paid attention to it since. Mostly, my response is "I don't care". The people elected him and I've been aware of him since the mid 90s. Does that make me a racist? I don't think so. I think it makes me a skeptic, which I know to be true.
