I have long maintained that the White House has purposely withheld the president’s long form birth certificate not because it shows that he wasn’t born in the US but because it shows he was. My theory being the president wanted the birther movement to continue to be strong on the right to give him and the left an easy club to beat them with.
However after an election that was an unmitigated disaster and poll numbers suggesting that enough people doubt his birthplace that it is actually causing him grief, there has been apparently a decision to nip this in the bud ASAP:
A unanimous verdict: All three think it’s time to release the long-form
And not only has Matthews suddenly decided that this has to come out but the new Governor of Hawaii is making an issue of it.
Why is this tool dredging up an issue that, mercifully, had begun to go away? Hawaii’s records department received only 16 requests for Obama’s birth certificate in November, down from 50 or so a month last year. Higher courts have waved away multiple Birther petitions, and the court-martial of Lt. Col. Terry Lakin ended with him pleading guilty to failing to report for duty. This subject has no traction, in other words, either legally or in mainstream media, and thus had probably never been fringier when Abercrombie spoke up and decided to treat it as a problem that needs solving.
Allahpundit doesn’t get it. The problem needing solving is the popularity of the president, not the birther stuff. It’s not that the birther narrative is any stronger, it’s that he’s governed in such a way that it would make someone believe that he is not American. (This is a logical fallacy after all the Berkeley City council was likely all born here as well as San Francisco’s. It is not being born here that is the difference it is how one is raised. see The Post American Presidency the Obama Administration’s war on America by Pam Geller).
Those actions have given said belief legs, he needs a way to turn it around, and more importantly he needs a victory that is not shared with Republicans. The disproving of the birther myth will do that, and even more importantly as some conspiracy people who haven’t read Seeing the Unseen will not believe the real document it will be something that will divide the right. (Don’t think for one minute this hasn’t come up without the White House being involved).
It is a measure of the desperation of this administration that they find it necessary to prove the president is an American to set up his confrontation with Republicans over the next two years.
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