CT Blue

Great video from the Huffington Post

During the election campaign I had the dubious honor of appearing on a talk radio show in which I was paired against some looney tune author of a scurrillous email that had made the rounds of the nutjobs. I didn’t know who the guy was when I agreed to go on the show, and I was amazed when a number of callers brought up this birth issue, which I had never heard about before. I remember I said that I wasn’t interested in paranoid fantasies and preferred to talk about actual issues.

There may be more than just fear of the base that motivates these Republicans to play cute with this issue. It may be that they feel there’s some points to be gained over the long term by questioning Obama’s legitimacy, even in so ludicrous a fashion. That’s what they did to Clinton, after all, from day one. It doesn’t matter, really, whether any individual allegation has merit. The accumulation of charges, endlessly repeated, does its work. And of course, this particular meme has the added attraction of raising the race issue sub silentio, since it pushes the theme of Obama as the “other”.

In the short term, if they can get people talking about Obama’s birth certificate, they can get them to stop talking about health care, and the thousand unnatural shocks to which Republicans have exposed the body politic. Democrats are notoriously bad at controlling the conversation, and so far they have been unable to make the Republicans pay any price for catering to people who are certifiably insane. Perhaps that’s changing a bit. Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), is introducing a resolution in the House congratulating Hawaii on its 50th year of statehood and stating as fact that Obama was born there. Michelle Bachmann (R-nutcase) objected to a vote on the measure due to the lack of a quorom. That presents an opportunity for Democrats, since they can force a vote be getting a quorom. It would be interesting to see how many Republicans make themselves scarce by absenting themselves from the proceedings.

It is somewhat dispiriting, speaking as a member of the Democratic base, that while Republicans will do almost anything to avoid offending the crazies who are all that’s left of their party, Democrats often embrace the opportunity to offend the progressives to whom they turn to fill their coffers when election time rolls around.