The Party of Crazy.

It's a sad day for the US when the president has to stoop to the level of stupidity and political absurdness by having to prove he's a US citizen! It has to do with the conservatives and bigots who will never accept Obama as a legitimate president. Even though this campaign to de-legitimize this Democratic president has racial undertones, the same people did it to president Clinton.

By the way, there's nothing that will satisfy the "birthers" and those who will never accept Obama's legitimacy to be president. It's not a simple political disagreement here. Bush was awarded the presidency in 2000 but even though we hated his policies we recognized that half of the country voted for him. I think Obama calculated that he'd score some political points by presenting the "long form" of his birth certificate, and that the clueless "floaters" [low-information, highly impressionable voters] were buying the birthers' conspiracy! Whatever.

Such campaigns of stupidity take hold because there's a critical mass in the US that support it. Haven you noticed something else? The crazies tend to congregate in the Republican party and the conservative base. Nowhere in no time* the Democratic party, and the progressive voters, allowed for such craziness to take hold. There is a reason why the likes of Hannity, Limbaugh, Beck, et. al (too many to mention) don't exist on the progressive side. 

We had liberal populists but any presidential candidate that broke the 5% approval was not politically extreme. Take a look at the field of the GOP presidential candidates fro, 2008 until the next presidential election next year... Oy!

OK, I haven't forgotten the Congressional Republican leadership and their demonstrated values and priorities, but for now... it's the economy, stupid!


Update: * Obviously, the history of the Democratic Party has had its shares of kooks, but I meant in my lifetime, in the last couple generations, no crazy extremist has gained acceptance by the rank and file. The Republican party was the progressive party during the Civil War and up to the start of the 20th century when there's was a split--with the progressives leaving it (like Theodore Roosevelt), charging the GOP as a offshoot of the big business interests.