So why bother bending to their demands if they're invalids who won't ever sniff the actual nomination? I don't get this at all. Removing the birther discussion from the campaign is an unsavvy move. There is zero way this will help him politically.
I believe the exact opposite, actually. Huge blown opportunity, IMO. Why not let Trump take himself out of the race by doing/saying something stupid? Which he will inevitably do.... Or better yet, why not let him win the nomination, THEN blow him out of the race? What Obama has done is like Reagan deciding to take out Mondale during the race for the Democratic nomination instead of the Presidential race in 84.
The birther I deal with that I mentioned in another thread just said they are 100% behind Trump as the presidential nominee now. LOL I think this move was brilliant by Obama.
Meh. Whatever. I don't care enough to really argue about it, so perhaps you're right. Back to work...
He releases the cert to prove the tea baggers wrong but they won't believe it anyway. Now he seems to have pissed off a lot of his supporters by revealing the truth. Poor guy, damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.
Except, right or wrong, it was dominating the news cycle. A President's biggest asset is the ability to control the news cycle, and he needed to get control of that again.
Except that even many in the leadership of the Republican party knew this was a folktale and given how even Michelle Bachmann was backing off of this issue they were troubled by it. Obama releasing his birth certificate now just shows that the Admin. actually felt this was a legitimate issue and by taking this action lend it legitimacy. Its like when the USAF issued a report about Roswell a few years ago that debunked the alien crash report. Just doing so actually caused more coverage and debate on the issue rather than just leave it as a fringe issue. The birther issue was never a serious threat to Obama as every government official out there along with the courts had slapped it down. It actually represented a greater threat to the Republican party in terms of the next election by having people like Trump try to ride the issue to Republican politics while the Republican leadership wanted very little to do with it. As I said before I doubt this will end the birther madness it will probably cripple Trump's possible candidacy. Ironically this could end up hurting Obama since if the birther issue dies down will likely help the Republicans unite behind a more mainstream candidate.
I just disagree. In the end the birther debate wouldn't have been part of the main campaign (unless Trump won somehow) because the nominee would never discuss it. It would be dead. Obama would never have been able to use a trump card (lol) on the whole birther issue because it wouldn't come up. Too many of you look at things only through your own eyes and can't see political advantages when they are there because you don't see why it is a good thing to you. This was smart.
1) he gave the people who already believe he was born in the US admire him for being "the bigger man" and eliminate any distractions from more important discussions 2) by doing this, he knows that a majority of birthers or bigots or racists will still complain about not releasing it earlier or it being fake or something. the birthers or bigots or racists are still going to be there and come up with something else and they will be used and exposed over and over again.
I think the stupidest thing of all is people saying he waited this long to finally provide proof. He'd already provided proof. His certificate of live birth is every bit as legal and provides as much proof as the long form birth certificate. It was already proven. Now it's proven twice. It doesn't make it more clear, and this isn't better proof. It's the exact same level of proof as he had before.
The comparison to Roswell is a bad one. Roswell WAS a fringe issue. The birther junk is not. It's getting mega coverage on all the major networks right now because of Trump. It had been a fringe issue before that, but now all of a sudden the most outspoken Republican potential nominee is all over every show talking about this issue. Obama would never get this opportunity again. Prior to this releasing it would have been bad form because it would have been caving to the ravings of a lunatic fringe. Now it was different. CNN (CNN!) was talking about this every night! It was headlining their webpage every day.
I didn't take it that way as I wasn't surprised at all. They posted the long-debunked Kenyan birth certificate along with other images at WND as "proof" that the long form was a fake. The sigh went along with a facepalm...
He didn't need to do that by releasing his birth certificate. He does that by ignoring the issue the way Bill Clinton ignored Vince Foster rumors. Instead he has given more legitimacy to the issue by officially addressing it. As you note the presidency carries a lot of weight and anything the President addresses immediately gains some level of legitimacy. Obama always had the upper hand on this issue and the longer Republicans squabbled about it the better it was for him. This move was not needed at this time.
LOL Will Release Of Obama's Purported Birth Certificate Give Rise To New "Certer" Movement? This morning’s White House release of President Barack Obama’s long form birth certificate will, of course, do little to derail the “birther” movement, which will now analyze the document with the kind of verve previously directed toward those Texas Air National Guard memos faxed to CBS from that Kinko’s in Abilene. So here’s a few nutty points about the birth certificate sure to be seized upon by the nonbelievers: • If the original document was in a bound volume (as reflected by the curvature of the left hand side of the certificate), how can the green patterned background of the document's safety paper be so seamless? • Why, if Obama was born on August 4, 1961, was the “Date Accepted by Local Reg.” four days later on August 8, 1961? • What is the significance of the smudges in the box containing the name of the reported attendant? • In the “This Birth” box there are two mysterious Xs above “Twin” and “Triplet.” Is there a sibling or two unaccounted for? • What is the significance of the mysterious numbers, seen vertically, on the document’s right side? • Finally, the “Signature of Local Registrar” in box 21 may be a desperate attempt at establishing the document’s Hawaiian authenticity. Note to forgers: it is spelled “Ukulele.”http://www.thesmokinggun.com/buster/barack-obama/birth-obama-certer-movement-098513
Maybe he knows that the opposition will just look for another non-issue to bring up (like he's a sekrit Muslim). This will make them look "moraner".
No, it will not change their opinions. And it is not intended to. However, it will serve to further alienate them more and begin to reveal their disconnect from reality.
Vince Foster rumors weren't dominating news coverage drowning out everything else Clinton was trying to do.
