The Right Still Doesn't Get It

Liberal blogs and pundits are playing chess while the conservatives continue to play checkers. Today should remove any doubt about that.

This birther story has been around for well over a year now. The issue has just taken off in the mainstream media this week. Am I birther? No. Are there conservatives out there who believe Obama isn't a natural born citizen? Yeah, so what? Ask yourself this. How much time has Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, Malkin, O'reilly, The National Review, The Weekly Standard, or even Beck spent on this subject recently? Almost none. So this is yet again another manufactured story that has oddly popped up in the past week.

You have to ask yourself, who is this story intended to help and why is it popping up now? Over the weekend the most accurate polling company showed Obama under 50% for the first time ever. Even with the glowing coverage in the media he has an unbelievably high 40% very unfavorable number only six months into his term. This White House has showed time and again that they don't debate the issues, they look to marginalize the opposition. What better way to do that than to brand their opposition conspiracy theorists. "hey, you don't want to be in opposition to Barack with all those kooks do you?" This is how the debate is being framed by the media this week even though this issue has been out there for OVER A YEAR. Rather than seeing through this ploy to distract from Obamas poll numbers and health care disasters, conservatives are playing right into their hands. Hot Air and the National Review have been tripping over eachother to distance themselves from birthers rather than attacking the premise that it's mainstream conservatism. How many liberal politicians were asked in the run up to the 08 election if they were "truthers?"

Hot Air currently has 6 birther stories or links up today. The one that amazes me says:

People wonder why Obama doesn’t demand that Hawaii release the original records to put an end to the Birther nonsense. The biggest reason? It wouldn’t work. The same people who believe that Obama forged a Certificate of Live Birth twice corroborated by the state that issued it will insist that Obama got someone to forge any new records produced by Hawaii as well.



If that's what you believe why are you wasting a blog post trying to convince them when you admit no amount of evidence will work. Why not fight back on the premise that is being set by the media that this has "taken hold of the Republican party." All the influential conservatives I mentioned above are either on TV, radio, or blog every day. Count up how much time they've spent this month trying to prove Obama isn't a US citizen.



The conservative side continues to believe that if they speak out against these issues it will garner them support and respect among the media, which in turn will mean better coverage so they can pick up the independents. They don't realize they're just playing right into the lefts hands. This is still the case with Republican pundits on TV. So many of them preface their criticism of Obama by saying things like, "Now he's clearly a brilliant man but..." They do this under some weird illusion that this will make their criticism seem more valid when in fact it just bolsters Obamas standing. What is clearly brilliant about him? His grades from college? Haven't seen them. Reading off a teleprompter? Not the toughest thing to do. Having an adoring press? Speaks more to the media than it does to him. Now lets flip the script on these same Republican pundits and bring up Palin. They all say, "Well she clearly needs to bone up on issues and do her homework." They're like Teddy Ruxpin dolls that are all programmed to say the same thing, just pull the string.



Now Obama is a guy who spent hundreds of billions on a stimulus that has lost jobs, crafted a health care bill that is a disaster, and wants to pass a cap and trade bill that will cause this country to lose millions of jobs and send electricity bills skyrocketing. Yet the REPUBLICAN pundits call him "brilliant" while saying Palin "needs to bone up on issues." There's something wrong with that picture. Show me all the liberal pundits who build up the conservative politician while diminishing the liberal one. You can't, but what you can find are liberal Democrats controlling the House, Senate, and White House. Coincidence? Conservatives need to stop playing by the rules that the opposition sets. It should start with this birther issue. If 9/11 truthers didn't push away independents from voting Democrat then birthers won't push them away from voting Republican. Stop fighting eachother and focus on what the White House doesn't want you to: Their agenda.