Riot Act

Erick Erickson has taken the trouble to draw a line in the sand and banned Truthers and Birthers from Red State. He can do what he wants, of course; but in doing so, Erickson may have provided the intellectual and political rationale for reading Birthers out of the conservative/Tea Party Movement, so his post, and its follow-up posts are worth your time. Vigilance: I'm Banning Birthers, Truthers, & Groups Affiliated Therewith

The tea party movement is in danger of getting a bad reputation for allowing birfers and truthers to share the stage. At the National Tea Party, Joseph Farah treated the birfer issue as legitimate. In Texas, tea party activists have rallied to Debra Medina who, just yesterday, refused to definitely dismiss the 9/11 truther conspiracy as crackpot nonsense. If a candidate cannot do that, we cannot help that candidate. It’s that simple.

So we arrive at one of those moments where I am fully prepared to part ways with the individuals and groups willing to share the stage and treat as legitimate the crazies who believe the President was born in Kenya, the crazies who believe our government was complicit September 11th terrorist attacks … two groups, incidentally that increasingly overlap.

This sets us up for attacks from the left and from within that we must anticipate. It is one thing to separate ourselves from these individuals and groups. It is quite another to know that these people are among us. We should be careful. All of us have an obligation to vet those who we ally with. Just because someone is stridently against the size of government does not make him an ally if he also believes the U.S. Army blew up the World Trade Center. Such a person brings disrepute on us all, deservedly so.

On the other hand, it may not be known that someone is a birfer or truther. We should be willing to show each other good grace and a measure of understanding in dealing with the troublesome fringe. We should also remember it was the Clintonistas who started the birfer rumor and the most vocal truthers live in Hollywood and voted for Obama. That is not, however, an excuse for us to associate with the nuts.

The media never runs stories about the Communist Party USA’s routine pronouncements in favor of Barack Obama. The media has never run legitimate stories about Barack Obama’s ties to the communist oriented New Party in Chicago. Obama gets a pass even on radicals whose support he personally solicited and those he personally befriended for years. But the moment a birfer opens his mouth and spouts his stupidity from the stage of a tea party rally it becomes headline news on every news network. Complain all you like that that’s not fair, but it’s the world we live in.

There's nothing wrong with speculating about Obama's origins (and the redoubtable Jack cashill has written another intriguing essay speculating as to who Barack Obama's "real father " is); but the idea that such speculation must be part of the rhetoric for a national political movement is nuttier than Oliver Stone on a cashew bender. The goal of Tea Parties, conservatives, and the resurgent GOP is to persuade fence-sitting Americans that we must fundamentally redirect the size, scope, and direction of the federal government. This is not as easy as it sounds, as there are millions of Americans who like the illusory security offered by seemingly limitless entitlement spending, and we really have until November 2010 to make our case. We literally have no time to sit around arguing about Hawaiian birth certificates.

Even if it turns out that Obama was born outside the US, what is that going to change? As Erickson notes, no federal judge is going to overturn a presidential election based on faulty paperwork. As Erickson also points out (as did I a few months ago, although Erickson actually goes to the trouble to cite case law), Obama's mother was indisputably American, which is all that really matters. It's why John McCain is a "natural born American" despite being born in the Panama Canal Zone, and your very own Psota (and his siblings) is qualified to run for president - hey, I'm weighing my options - despite being born in Tokyo.

Erickson is running several gigabytes of angry Birther emails lecturing him pompously on the Constitution. They are like some of my clients who think they don't have to testify in their lawsuits because they can "take the fifth." They understand that there are words on a page somewhere, but don't really know how they apply. The "natural birth" provision is nowhere near as narrowly framed as they would like (no part of the Constitution is); and it is, frankly, trivial compared to the majestic sweep of some of the other provisions. Not only that - as I also pointed out - it is hopeless anachronistic:

I am sure it made sense to The Founders, who feared British aristocrats swanning into the young republic, spreading around some cash, and buying the executive branch. How likely is that to happen now? It's hopelessly anachronistic, and does not reflect the world we live in today. Are we really going to say to a hard working immigrant who came here at age 11 that he can't be president? What about an American citizen who happened to been born in Hong Kong (or wherever) because his mother went into premature labor? Etc.

Rather than being separated by a two-month sea voyage, we are now separated from foreign countries by hours-long airplane flights. American culture and political ideals are sufficiently widespread that people in other countries can be more attuned to what it means to be an American than the typical ACORN activist yelling that we need to destroy The System. An outdated requirement like "natural birth" for presidents has little, if any, relevance. It certainly has little to offer as a means to attack Obama.

The thing you always need to remember in American politics is this: most Americans are earnest, practical and hopelessly middle class. They literally don't want to go to meetings and marches where some loudmouth is yelling about birth certificates. I swear one of the reasons there was never a real anti-war movement in the US during the depths of the Iraq War was due to the bat-s*** craziness of many of the protesters. The earliest SF anti-war protests featured many naive suburban types, but they were joined by the full panoply of the Bay Area lunatic fringe. Some mom from Walnut Creek might "hate" George Bush, but there's no way she's going to walk down Market Street next to a topless lesbian carrying a Hamas flag, at least not more than once. The same dynamic will play out in the Tea Party Movement if Birthers demand and receive an outsize voice.

There really is no time for this sort of nonsense. The times are too grave.