Michele Bachmann made it clear what her #1 topic will be on the Jeff Katz radio show:
“I’ll tell you one thing, if I was ever to run for President of the United States, I think the first thing I would do in the first debate is offer my birth certificate, so we can get that off the table.”
Not only is this her #1 topic, but it now appears that it is #1 on her political agenda as Bachmann announced her first political hire, birther legislator, Iowa state Sen. Kent Sorenson. Sorenson is the author of Iowa’s birther bill (mercifully killed in committee). This reported by Mother Jones.
I’m not sure whether she is referring to the primary or the general election debates, but, either way, I’m trying to envision the scene. The moderator asks the first question about the Middle East, or the budget or health care and the first couple of candidates give semi-coherent responses. Then, he/she turns to Ms Bachmann who procedes to wave a piece of paper and shouts, “Look here, I was born in Minnesota (I don’t know where she was born, but I’ll assume that for the sake of argument)”.
Now let’s pretend such tactics win her the Republican nomination and she goes up agaiinst Obama. He pulls out his Hawaiian COLB. He could even have the Director of the DOH in attendance to vouch for it in front of 50,000,000 viewers. I don’t know exactlly how many people actually looked at the on-llne COLB, but I am quite certain it’s a tiny fraction of the audience for a presidential debate. Now what would Bachmann do? Claim the certificate is a fake? Based on what? I don’t see it ending well for her.
“Now what would Bachmann do? Claim the certificate is a fake? Based on what? I don’t see it ending well for her.”
Exactly. Typically the GOP is good at “dog-whistle issues” – this year’s dog whistle is “ban sharia law”: for example – it resonates with a xenophobic base and will be meaningless to everyone else and means nothing if it passes or not.
This BC thing is a bad dog-whistle tactic since it can be heard by non-birthers who will see the batty woman waving a piece of paper taking about hidden birth records. Peope will just wonder what she is ranting about.
Man these people are relentlessly stupid and predictable.
I think that any use of the birthers for dog-whistle politics will backfire – in the end, if any sort of confrontation is forced, President Obama has force majeure on his side – once this moves out of the court of public opinion and into a real court…
Please let Michelle Bachman run… please please please….
When I first heard about this I asked this of Birthers then- “so why isn’t Michelle Bachmann releasing her birth certificate right now? Her original long form birth certificate?
No Republican yet has provided his or her birth certificate to the public to view
The problem with, say, a Bachman/Palin Overdrive… Er. Um. I mean, candidacy is that there’s always a chance that an event like 9/11 or the financial crisis substantially impacts the nation’s politics and renders them actually electable – too much downside risk for my tastes…
Very good point. Although entertaining, it truly is a sad commentary on the state of America that such nutjobs and otherwise vapid candidates could even be worthy of mention for presidential consideration at all (other than as part of someone’s comedy act) and even worse, that such woefully inadequate contenders could attract any semblance of a following in their support.
I would also point out that while they aren’t viable Presidential candidates (barring a singular event), Caribou Barbie and the Minnesota Maniac could conceivably win the Republican nomination (the moderates and sane conservatives split amongst several candidates and former half-Governor Palin’s ardent followers constitute the largest and most highly motivated bloc in the early primaries and she gains enough momentum to carry her to the nomination before the field thins enough for her negatives to catch up with her and then goes rogue and tweets certified McCarthyist nutjob Bachman as her running mate…)
I agree that in the current political reality, due to the current makeup of both the GOP “base” and whatever the Tea Party is, that just about any demented crazy could end up becoming the GOP candidate.
The “reality” of what the GOP primaries could produce as a candidate and what is a good Presidential candidate for the nation have never been further apart…
Dunham (acting for her daughter) somehow. Sorenson is the writer of Iowa’s birther account statement (mercifully slaughtered in committee). . Peope will just wonder what she is ranting about. .
abercrombie talk March 27, 2011 at 9:57 am (Quote) #
Spam link.
Waterloo, Iowa.
> No Republican yet has provided his or her birth certificate to the public to view
And the Pest & eFail is praising a couple of people as “potential presidents” who are surprisingly closet on their own eligibility.
Andy Martin doing the “I’ll show mine when Obama shows his” dance, that other fool (forgot his name) who claims the US flag is his CV and his BC, plus Donald Trump who would likely be ineligible by birther standards (at least).
They can’t even find one pro-birther candidate who dares the publicity stunt of publishing his/her “original long form bird sertificat” up-front.
Doc, who are you trying to fool? Waterloo is in Belgium. And there is nothing Ameriican about Michelle Bachmann. Her first name is French and her last name is German.
Confession: I used to live in Moscow, not far from where I am typing now.
So what if Waterloo too is in Belgium, since (New) Belgium is in Iowa.
http://www.newbelgium.com/culture/contact-us.aspx
Though that firm’s CEO has ideas wich seem incompatible with Bachmann’s.
http://www.news.iastate.edu/news/2011/feb/LecturesJordan
OK, and now I am leaving to mend my flat tyre.
How many times in the debates among presidential candidates in the past few decades have any of them pulled out documents of any kind? I count zero. The rules of the debates generally do not allow use of props, charts, diagrams or other writings, except that the candidates may take notes during the course of the debate.
So is Bachmann saying she’ll cheat, or that she wants the rules changed just for her?
Trump Gives Newsmax License To Go Full Birther
Topic: Newsmax
It should come as no surprise that WorldNetDaily is reveling in Donald Trump’s outbreak of birtherism, with articles on his appearance on “The View” spewing his birther views and Sean Hannity’s subsequent shift to birtherism in defending Trump and Rush Limbaugh’s echoing it.
The surprise is that Newsmax is following WND’s birther lead.
A March 24 interview by Jim Meyers and Ashley Martella touts how Trump “is not backing down from his demand that President Barack Obama produce his birth certificate and stepped up his criticism by questioning why he has not released other personal records, including college transcripts and legislative papers.”
The article even repeats some bogus birther tropes. Meyers and Martella write that “former Pennsylvania Deputy Attorney General Philip Berg has claimed that Obama’s paternal grandmother says she was in the delivery room when he was born in Kenya,” but don’t mention that Berg’s claim has been discredited.
Newsmax followed up with a March 25 article by Dave Eberhart regurgitating Limbaugh’s praise of Trump’s birtherism.
Newsmax has previously resisted overt birtherism despite some of its columnists (and even CEO Christopher Ruddy) embracing the idea, its coverage has been intermittent at best and certaintly nowhere near the rabidly obsessive levels of WND.
But Newsmax is weirdly in the tank for Trump, beginning with Ronald Kessler’s slobbering over his presidential prospects in January and even bragging about how he and his wife “spent the Martin Luther King holiday weekend with [Trump] at Mar-a-Lago, his home and club on Palm Beach.” Indeed, Newsmax’s Trump interview is accompanied by an article by Chris Gonsalves on how Trump’s show “Celebrity Apprentice” is “drawing record viewers and topping the ratings in key demographics” and an S.E. Cupp column claiming other Republican presidential candidates could learn from Trump.
Newsmax’s fealty to Trump, it seems, has given it cover to go fully birther.
She’s saying anything she can to get attention right now.
She would set her hair on fire if that was the only way to get people to pay attention to her.
Representative Michele Bachmann voted in favor of the House Resolution 593 in the 111th Congress sponsored by Congressman Neil Abercrombie, commemorating the 50th Anniversary of Hawai’i statehood and containing the statement: “The 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama was born in Hawai’i on August 4, 1961.”
The final vote on that resolution was 378 in favor and 0 opposed.
> Representative Michele Bachmann voted in favor of the House Resolution 593
So was she lying back then or is she lying now? This is gonna be good. 😉
She’ll just say that nobody reads any of the bills that are voted on. After all, she’s got more important things to do.
The problem with the above potential Bachmann spin is that she tried to hold up this resolution because she objected to some of the wording, but then she ended up voting for it when she could have just abstained. She is “on the record” supporting Obama being born in Hawai’i.
Or she could just say that she doesn’t know how to read; then the birthers will really accept her as one of their own.