Real Estate tycoon Donald Trump's talk about a presidential bid is take your pick: a bad joke, a cheap publicity stunt, or the delusional raving of a guy with too much money, too much ego, and way too much time on his hands to stroke both. But Trump did manage to figure out one angle that was a sure fire, can't miss way to get attention. That was to dredge up the Birther's lie about President Obama.
Trump knew it would get the tongues wagging and an invite on a popular talk show. Though one of the hosts tore into him on it, Trump was non-plussed and repeated the stock line, "I want him to show his birth certificate" not once but twice. That as more than enough to get cheers from at least one Tea Party leader who gleefully said that Trump's revisit of the bogus issue got instantly elevated his presidential stock. It didn't. But the horrid and appalling truth is that it did put a household name, quasi public figure on record that the issue has enough merit to become a campaign issue. It won't, simply because it's now so discredited that it's joined the pantheon of politically correct no-nos for any of the pack of would be GOP presidential contenders to raise. Trump knew that, and that's partly why he blurted it out. But he also knew that why its taboo subject to raise in polite political circles, a significant number, if not majority of Republicans actually believe or want to believe that Obama's birth is a legitimate issue to dump back on the political table. This is not an insignificant point. More than two dozen lawsuits and petitions have been filed in various state courts contesting Obama's U.S. citizenship.
The Supreme Court's refusal to demand that Obama pony up his birth certificate has done absolutely nothing to take any steam out of the movement. If anything, it probably added some vapor to it, by convincing more that the Courts are in cahoots with the Obama White House to keep the real "truth" about his imagined foreign birth secret from the American people. In the past year, eleven states have in one form or another taken up the cry for presidential candidates , and of course the president to prove that they are bonafide U.S. citizens. The even scarier thing about the bogus controversy is that in each of the states that are trying to get a birther law passed, the bill's sponosrs have gotten dozens of legislators to sign onto to their bills. Georgia is a good example of the popularity of the birther line. GOP state rep Mark Hatfield got more than one --half of the Georgia legislature's 180 members (including one Democrat) to endorse the bill that flaly demands that President Obama produce his birth certificate to get on the Georgia's 2012 presidential ballot. Hatfield and the other bunch of signers rejected Hawaii's repeated public exhibit of Obama's birth certificate as "not sufficient."
The Obama birth certificate clamorers kicked their rumor mongering campaign about Obama's birth into even higher gear when some mainstream papers found the birth certificate controversy good copy and grist for public chatter. Since then the birthers have crudely cloaked themselves in the mantle of public spirited citizens and legal experts with no personal, political, let alone racial, ax to grind with Obama. Their sole goal they claimed was to insure electoral truth and accuracy, to make sure that all the legal requirements for holding a presidential office are met, and to head off a constitutional crisis. They even promised that they would put the matter to rest if Obama simply produced the original.
The real value of the Birther movement is that it's a tailor made back door movement to destabilize, or at the least keep the Obama administration off balance on policy initiatives he's pushing on health care, the economy, and a softer foreign policy outreach. The GOP and especially Tea Party leaders and activists are ferocious opponents of that.
Trump latched onto the birth certificate issue in part to keep his screwy, media grabbing presidential tease alive and along the way to make mischief against Obama. Beyond Trump doesn't have a single policy idea that anyone one stage beyond comatose would listen too. But then again he doesn't have to there are just too many millions out there that want to believe and think the worst about Obama. The fraudulent birth certificate controversy will always fit that bill.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He hosts a national Capitol Hill broadcast radio talk show on KTYM Radio Los Angeles and WFAX Radio Washington D.C. streamed on The Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on blogtalkradio.com and wfax.com and internet TV broadcast on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
