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#TeaParty: Palin the Presidential Hopeful; Farah and the ?Birther? Brouhaha

By Phil

For your Tea Party Convention round-up multimedia enjoyment…

OrlandoSentinel.com: Sarah Palin tells ?Fox News Sunday?: Barack Obama needs to ?toughen up? if he wants to be re-elected

FoxNews.com: Palin ‘Would Be Willing’ to Take On Obama in 2012

LATimes.com: Sarah Palin to Tea Party Convention: ‘This is about the people’

NYTimes.com: Palin Assails Obama at Tea Party Meeting

Here’s her address to the convention:

Via FoundingBloggers.com, the press was certainly out en masse to cover the convention:

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Yet, for this blogger, while the former Governor was certainly a headline-maker, WorldNetDaily Founder, CEO and Editor-in-Chief Joseph Farah proverbially raised the stakes yet higher regarding the eligibility issue. Here’s the C-SPAN video of his speech; he begins talking about eligibility at approximately the 25 minute mark.

After the speech, things got even more interesting, as good ol’ lefty David Weigel at the WashingtonIndependent reported Mr. Farah and Andrew Breitbart (of BigGovernment.com fame) were in disagreement over the whole eligibility issue (an audio clip of the conversation is available at the link):

?Andrew is my friend,? said Farah. ?He has the right to disagree, and he has the right to say anything to a socialist newspaper that he wants. And if he wants to criticize his friend to you, and he?s dumb enough to do that??

Breitbart raised his eyebrows. ?I?m dumb to do what??

?Criticize your friend to this socialist newspaper.?

?I was talking to her,? said Breitbart, pointing to Schilling. ?I was talking to you. And I was saying that I disagreed on the birther stuff.?

?OK, well, did you know that Dave Weigel from The Washington Independent was??

?I was talking to [WorldNetDaily's Chelsea Schilling],? said Breitbart. ?She was asking me if I thought it was wise to bring it up, and I said, no. We have a lot of strong arguments to be making, and that is a primary argument. That is an argument for the primaries that did not take hold. The arguments that these people right here are making are substantive arguments. The elections in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts were all won not on birther, but on substance. And to apply to this group of people the concept that they?re all obsessed with the birth certificate, when it?s not a winning issue??

?It is a winning issue!?

?It?s not a winning issue.?

?It is! It becomes even more of a winning issue when the press abrogates its responsibility??

?You don?t recognize it as a fundamentally controversial issue that forces a unified group of people to have to break into different parts? It is a schism of the highest order.?

?Nothing exposes the president?s??

?Then prove it!?

?The press isn?t asking the question??

?Prove it!?

?Prove what??

?Prove your case.?

?I should prove, what, a birth certificate that may or may not exist?? Farah had gotten irritated. ?That?s ridiculous. You don?t even understand the fundamental tenets of what journalism is about, Andrew. It?s not about proving things. It?s about asking questions and seeking truth.?

Breitbart tensed up after that insult. ?Right.?

?I know you?re not a journalist, so that?s fine. But don?t diminish people who?ve been doing this for 35 years.?

?So you?re going to go on record saying that I?m not a journalist??

?Are you? I?ve never heard you claim to be. Are you??

?I?ll let it be answered by you.?

?Well, I knew Drudge didn?t consider himself a journalist, so I assumed that you were. ? I don?t know, I?m not trying to insult you.?

?You did.?

At that point, Judson Phillips ? who had spotted a very small crowd around us ? walked into the fray and tried to simmer everyone down with a joke.

?I can give you absolutely conclusive and definitive proof that Obama?s birth certificate does not exist. How else do you explain why Joe Biden is vice president??

That more or less ended the conversation ? Farah moved on, and agreed to talk more about why he and WorldNetDaily continued to pursue stories on Obama?s citizenship. The citizenship issue had stuck around and taken off, he said, ?because of us.? He ran stories asking questions about the issue ? including stories that were quickly debunked ? because the rest of the media wasn?t asking the questions.

?Do you think this has made my life easier, doing this?? asked Farah. ?I used to be on TV all the time. I haven?t been on Fox News once since I started talking about this.?

Asked whether he thought his speech created any problems for Sarah Palin ? prompting reporters to ask why she patronized a convention with rhetoric like this ? Farah rejected the premise.

?Sarah Palin is a big girl,? he said. ?She can take care of herself. I have a lot of confidence that she?ll take care of herself well. ? My objective is not to get Sarah Palin elected or something. My job as a journalist is to seek the truth.?

For me, Mr. Breitbart’s conundrum, above, is really simple to deal with:

1. No actual reporters have ever actually questioned this President over his birth or childhood, save WND’s Les Kinsolving;
2. Asking Mr. Obama to produce his birth certificate — he already freely admits to being a British citizen at birth — is neither unlawful nor extraordinary; there’s simply no law that exists that requires Article 2, Section 1, Clause 5 of the Constitution to be enforced;
3. Those of us who question this President’s bona fides are fully capable of multi-tasking over multiple topics (meaning that while eligibility is not currently a top issue under discussion, it is among several that are able to be considered at once)

Since when did questions about a President’s history become so taboo?

I like the way that Prof. Jacobson spells out the issue about eligibility:

At one level, Obama and his supporters have played the “Birther” issue brilliantly. By refusing to release his birth certificate and by equating a demand that Obama release his birth certificate with being a racist, Obama has created the single most toxic charge that can be leveled in current politics.

The Birther card is the new race card, trotted out under strained circumstances in an attempt to discredit political opponents.

We saw this tactic directed by prominent left-wing bloggers against Scott Brown based on demonstrably false factual premises. Brown never questioned whether Obama was born in Hawaii, never raised the issue, and never spoke about the issue, yet was accused of being a Birther.

The use of the Birther card is uni-directional. When Andrew Sullivan wrote that Obama should release his birth certificate, he was not subjected to the type of venom from the left as others and was not excommunicated. There is a principled position that anyone who aspires to a constitutional office should prove with the best evidence available that he or she satisfies the constitutional requirements. But since this test has not been applied prior to Obama, raising such an issue leaves one open to charges of racism.

(Added: While other candidates, including John McCain, have had their constitutional qualification questioned, in McCain’s case because he was born in the Panama canal zone, the documentation or level of proof never before has been the issue, as far as I am aware) …

It is a strategy which is foolish because it conflates those who question Obama’s citizenship (a relatively small percentage of the population) with those who question his policies (a relatively large percentage of the population), but it is the Democratic strategy. …

In additional to pissing off (how’s that for an analytical term?) people who question Obama’s policies, the use of the Birther card has not resolved anything. Questions about Obama’s birth, whether real or imagined, merely have been driven underground rather than being refuted. …

The Birther issue may not be the reason why 40% of the population questioned whether Obama loved America (and there would be no logic to it anyway, since one does not need to be born here to love America). But there is no denying that the issue is hanging out there under the surface.

When even Obama feels compelled equate those who question his policies with those who question his citizenship, as Obama did the other day, it is a sign that the issue has not gone away and is eating away at the Obama presidency.

By using the Birther accusation as a political tool to be used against opponents regardless of circumstances, Obama and his supporters have won the battle, but they are losing the war.

And I think Obama and his supporters know it, but they are unable to do anything about it because they have painted themselves into a political corner.

As always, the Professor is well-spoken on the politics of the “birther” issue.

And to round out the posting, “Pixel Patriot” and The Post & Email’s Sharon Rondeau bring the following news concerning Georgia GOP gubernatorial hopeful Rep. Nathan Deal and his letter to the President:

On February 6, 2010, Carl Swensson, Republican Precinct Captain for Morrow, GA, interviewed Deal for about five minutes, during which he asked about the letter.  Deal, who currently represents the 9th congressional district of Georgia, is running for that state?s governor.   The interview took place at the ?Faith, Family and Freedom Kickoff? at Riverside High School in Atlanta, GA on Saturday. …

When Swensson asked Deal if he had received a response, Deal replied that he has not.

Deal states on camera that he is not questioning Obama?s legitimacy for the presidency but is requesting a source of verifiable information for his constituents who have questions about it.

See the following links regarding the eligibility saga:

• The background:
  • Obama?s Presidential Eligibility: What You Need to Know
  • Obama’s Sealed Background Documentation
  • Obama Citizenship Facts
  • What’s the Difference Between a Birth Certification Versus a Birth Certificate
  • Hawai’i State Department of Health -- Vital Records “Obama” page
• The questions:
  • Leo Donofrio Affirms FightTheSmears.com?s Obama Citizenship Admission
  • Fallible FactCheck.org: TheBirthers, Donofrio Cause Change on Obama Citizenship
  • Newsmax.com: Obama Birth Certificate Not Released
  • Keyes v. Lingle: Forensic Examiner and IT Expert Disprove Certification of Live Birth
  • The State Department and Sen. Patrick Leahy’s (D-VT) Natural Born Citizen Resolution (April 10, 2008)
  • Citizen Grand Jury Updates and Eligibility Lawsuit Listing

-Phil

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Photo courtesy LATimes.com

Full post as published by The Right Side of Life on February 08, 2010 (boomark / email).