Obama's strategy in releasing his long form birth certificate.

Five things are playing in Obama’s favor.

First, the Republicans -- driven by their most conservative members in Congress -- will face a primary with many candidates who will advance harsh ideological positions. Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Donald Trump and others might as well be on the Democratic National Committee payroll. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s reverse Robin Hood plan to cut more than $6 trillion in spending over a decade will provide the outrage, stoked by a sitting president possessed of verbal discipline.

The field of Republican weaklings is already getting smaller. This week, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour dropped out of the race for the presidency.

...

Today was supposed to be a good day for Trump -- his first major foray into New Hampshire, a key primary state. As it would happen, he walked right into the trap set by Obama's political operation.

Almost on cue, Trump responded in the only way he possibly could, which was to take credit for the release of the birth certificate. However, cognizant of the fact that his supporters don't trust Obama one bit, Trump managed to raise some doubt even while taking credit for the release.

“I wanna look at it, but I hope it’s true,” Trump said during a visit to Portsmouth. “We have to look at it, we have to see ‘is it real,’‘is it proper?’”

Whether spurred by Trump's comments or not, early numbers are already floating around, suggesting that still almost a quarter of Americans do not believe the newly-released certificate is authentic. Yet, it's important to note that these doubters would not vote for Obama even if the Devil himself was his opponent next year.

Obama's move this morning makes the "birthers" look like the fringe group that they are. The news will satisfy the swinging independent bloc, and in this upcoming election that's all that matters.

...

That the White House strategically waited to pounce, should demonstrate to Republicans that President Obama is going to be a formidable candidate next year.

This is why most serious GOP candidates will likely wait until 2016 to run.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/04/27/obama-trumps-trump-donald-walks-right-presidents-trap/#ixzz1KpkuPZNd

This is not about race

but you didn't see anyone running around saying McCain couldn't run or asking him to prove he was really born on base.

You think people make conscious decisions to be racist?

Really?

Last night's Rachel Maddow show on how the media is promoting and profiting from the birther conspiracy:

You also did not see a lot of people running around claiming that McCain could not be trusted, though given his role in the Keating Five and for picking Palin, such a claim might have been justified.

THURSDAY, APR 28, 2011 13:09 ET

The roots of birtherism go beyond race

BY STEVE KORNACKI


Let's be clear: Birtherism itself has everything to do with race. It encourages -- and feeds off -- emotional, culturally driven resentment of President Obama, a sense that he's not "one of us." But as Obama seeks to put all of the zany conspiracy theories to rest for good, it's worth remembering that there's a broader phenomenon that birtherism grew out of: the right's instinctive, aggressive rejection of Democratic presidents.

Think back to the late months of 2007, when it was taken as a given that Hillary Clinton would be the next Democratic presidential nominee. At the time, the right still considered itself at war with the Clintons -- something that had started with Bill Clinton's election in 1992, continued through his presidency, and extended well into his ex-presidency. From the moment Bill left office in January 2001, the right had been preparing for its inevitable showdown with Hillary -- something that looked imminent in late '07, when Obama's campaign seemed to be foundering. Against this backdrop, Obama was typically portrayed by conservative commentators not as a radical, anti-American outsider but as a plucky, well-meaning (if a bit naive) do-gooder who was about to be savagely and unfairly mauled by the Big Bad Clinton Machine.

Shortly thereafter, though, something unexpected happened: Obama started winning primaries and caucuses. Lots of them. By the end of February, he'd built a commanding delegate advantage. Hillary, it became clear, was going to lose. The threat of a Clinton restoration was over. And just like that, conservatives seemed to forget every nasty, terrible thing they'd ever said about the Clintons. The most hilarious example, as I documented at the time, may have been Pat Buchanan, who had famously pilloried Hillary as a radical feminist "lawyer-spouse" during his 1992 Republican convention speech; but as she fell hopelessly behind Obama, Buchanan began portraying her as a folk hero to white working-class voters -- with Obama now relegated to the role of dangerous radical. And Buchanan was hardly alone. It was at this point in the 2008 campaign that conservative opinion-shapers began focusing obsessively on Jeremiah Wright and Obama's other frightening "associations."


http://www.salon.com/news/politics/birthers/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/04/28/birtherism_race

WEDNESDAY, APR 27, 2011 10:31 ET


If you think this will shut Trump up ....


BY STEVE KORNACKI

In theory, it made sense, the White House releasing President Obama's long-form birth certificate just as Donald Trump's private jet was about to touch down in New Hampshire.

The idea, perhaps, was that Trump, who'd presumably spent the trip devising a few new birther talking points, would disembark, find himself confronted with a sea of reporters shoving copies of the long form in his face and demanding comment, and -- for once -- be dumbstruck. On national television. Or maybe the idea was just that, against the backdrop of the most irrefutable evidence possible that Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961, Trump would for all of America finally be shown to be the fool that he is.

http://www.salon.com/news/donald_trump/index.html?story=/politics/war_room/2011/04/28/donald_trump_discrimination_suit

it's worth remembering that there's a broader phenomenon that birtherism grew out of: the right's instinctive, aggressive rejection of Democratic presidents.