'Birther' Claims Force GOP Leaders To Take A Stand

WASHINGTON -- It's the conspiracy theory that won't go away. And it's forcing Republican officials and presidential contenders to pick sides: Do they think Barack Obama was born outside the United States and disqualified to be president?

As the Republican candidates tiptoe through the mine field, Democrats are watching. They hope the debate will fire up their liberal base and perhaps tie the eventual GOP nominee to fringe beliefs that swing voters will reject.

In recent days several prominent Republicans have distanced themselves, with varying degrees of emphasis, from the false claim that Obama was born in a foreign country. But with a new poll showing that two-thirds of adult Republicans either embrace the claim or are open to it, nearly all these GOP leaders are not calling for a broader effort to stamp out the allegations.

"It's a real challenge for the Republican Party and virtually every Republican candidate for president," contends Democratic pollster Geoff Garin. If it's not handled well, he said, all-important independent voters might see Republicans as extreme or irrelevant.

Many Americans consider claims of Obama's foreign birth to be preposterous, unworthy of serious debate. Yet the "birther" issue threatens to overshadow the early stages of the GOP effort to choose a presidential nominee for 2012. Real estate mogul Donald Trump has stirred the pot lately, repeatedly saying Obama should provide his original birth certificate.

From a political standpoint, it's impossible to dismiss the matter as conspiratorial fantasy, akin to, say, claims that the 1969 moon landing was staged. In the latest New York Times-CBS News poll, 45 percent of adult Republicans said they believe Obama was born in another country, and 22 percent said they don't know. One-third of Republicans said they believe the president is native born.

The same poll a year ago found considerably less suspicion among Republicans. A plurality of GOP adults then said Obama was U.S.-born, and 32 percent said they believed he was foreign-born.

In the latest poll, about half of all independents said Obama was born in the United States. The other independents were about evenly split between those saying he is foreign-born, and those saying they don't know.

Ten percent of Democrats said Obama was born overseas, and 9 percent were unsure.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

Ok; so there were two shooters in Dallas, the moon landings were all faked, we attacked ourselves on 9/11, we knew Japan was going to attack and we let them. . . . . . Come on!  Really?
Look at the lineup of politicians moving away from the birther controversy.  Palin, Huckabee, Bachmann, and on and on; a virtual who’s who of republican politics.  Three or four months ago, you couldn’t get them to shut-up, and now they are all ebbing away from the ridiculous position that President Obama was not born on American soil.  They want to run from this issue.  They want to run from it real bad, because they know it has played out in the media, and it’s a tired old argument.  They want to run from this, but they can’t.  You know why?  They can’t avoid the birther issue, because almost half their base believes that this nonsense is true.  They believe that President Obama was not born in this country, and therefore he should not be president. 
Once Donald Trump piled on, you had to know that it would be only a matter of time before the Repub-rats would run for higher ground.  They are all off-message right now because of the birther issue, and try as they might, they just can’t steer themselves back to the real issues of the day.  You know, like the fake budget crises, the government shutdown, and the repeal of the Healthcare Reform Act.  Oh if only the Donald hadn’t raised the birth certificate issue again.  Where are his handlers?  Is anyone trying to control him?