I know a lot of people in the liberal/progressive blogosphere are going crazy about Senator Richard Shelby seeming endorsement of the lunatic wingnut fringe idea that President Obama is not a natural born citizen and therefore is not our legitimate President, but I for one am glad he said it. In point of fact I would love for someone to poll all of the Republicans in Congress and get their views on the subject on the record. Senator Shelby didn't say that by accident, he did it on purpose to rile up his wingnut base. Hell he might even actually believe it. But a statement like his helps to pull back the drapes on the mentality of a lot of these wingnut Republicans and how out of touch they are with the mainsteam of America. This same "he is not a citizen" meme was played out over and over during the Presidential campaign to the point where then Senator Obama had to go as far as to post a copy of his birth certificate online. In the end the story was an EPIC FAIL and he still won by a landslide. But just like Republicans are still flogging tax cuts as the panacea for all that ills the country, they still see the birth certificate issue as a winning strategy "if only people will just listen". They still don't get that the people HAVE listened and rejected it. Hell you would think at the least they could read an approval poll. But since they can't I say let them expose themselves even further and in the process marginalized themselves in an even greater fashion ala Michele Bachmann. At some point the American people will just totally disregard any position Republicans like them take on any issue after they have shown themselves to be totally bat shit crazy.
Keep. It. Coming.
(h/t Benen)
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I've been trying to get my liberal/progressive friends on this bandwagon. They want this to go away, because they find it silly to even engage people on the subject. The wingnuts in my hometown keep saying "We're doing this so he'll show us his birth certificate and put this to bed." My question is: Why would he bother? Why not let you waste your time and energy on something he already has the answers to? Watching these nuts go through all of this nonsense while he tackles entitlements is too much fun. The only problem I see is finding a big enough EPIC FAIL sign for when they figure out that they've been hoodwinked.
ReplyDeleteI don't generally worry about that brand of right wingnuttery, except for the fact that their words are taking on a different sort of tone in recent weeks.
ReplyDeleteI know that Steve dismisses Alan Keyes' rant about the birth certificate and other general incendiary rhetoric. But all together, Keyes and Shelby and all the others, they create a chorus that seems to call for outright insubordination.
I don't know where they're headed with this. But it doesn't seem as if they're hoping for a peaceful resolution.
Nate is on this "expose the crazy base" strategy as well.
ReplyDeleteWell, the White House is clearly comfortable going after individuals as props, as foils, for its own arguments. It's aligned with the brand of Obama as problem-solver-in-chief, calling out specific instances and individuals to say, hey look, see what I mean about a petty political culture? By keeping examples fresh, the White House is betting that Americans will side with it, and marginalize the "people who rant on cable television." In essence, tone implies substance. If you're "ranting," you have an agenda, you're contributing to an unhelpful public policy climate. You might attract wide attention, as the Santelli incident did (Gibbs confessed he'd been watching it over the previous 24 hours on cable). By contrast, the highly popular Obama is seen as calm, thoughtful, nuanced and deliberate. Whereas Bill Clinton probably wouldn't have been able to pull this personality contrast off (he was seen as more ebullient and combative in his personality), it works effectively for a popular Obama.