Birthers - In The News

It just keeps getting better. Or worse. Or embarrassing. Or frightening.
Best headline ever, from Hunter (DK):

Did Obama's Birth Certificate Kill Vince Foster?

JedL (DK): The birth of a regional rump party

Here's another amazing finding from our poll showing that less than half of Republicans and southerners believe Barack Obama was born in the United States: 7 in 10 Americans who don't believe Barack Obama was born in the U.S. live in the south, which has 30% of the U.S. population. Nearly 6 in 10 are Republicans, who compromise just 22% of the population.

Here's the data in chart form, showing the distribution of people who either said they believed Pres. Obama was born outside the U.S. or that they were unsure:

Talk about a regional rump party. Jebus!

kos: Hard to believe, but birthers are REALLY that strong

Our poll on the birther movement has gotten a ton of attention this morning. Some of it came from the pollsters at PPP, which tweeted this morning:

RT @pwire Just 42% of GOP think Obama is a citizen... http://pwire.us/... (I am a little skeptical of this finding- may ask on next nat. poll)

Three hours later:

Adding a birther question to our Virginia poll for this weekend

And then a short while ago:

I take back my skepticism about R2K poll- only 79 of first 168 respondents to Va. poll think BHO was born in USA! 56 say no and 33 not sure

That's a breakdown of 47 percent who think Obama was born in US versus 33 percent who don't. Our poll found that in the South, the numbers were 47-23. It looks like PPP's Virginia poll will confirm our own results. I also look forward to their national poll, so we can also compare results.

Greg Sargent:

* Dave Weigel further breaks down that birther poll along racial lines, and makes a striking discovery: The number of southern whites who doubt Barack Obama’s U.S. citizenship might top 70 percent.

* The birther myth is far more widespread among Republicans than the Muslim one, which is a bit surprising, since you’d expect that those who believe Obama faked his citizenship would also believe he faked his religion.

JedL (DK): Eric Cantor: Birtherism is a secret liberal plot

Greg Sargent:

GOP Rep. Eric Cantor says he’s no birther — he has no questions about Obama’s citizenship, his spokesman tells me. But Cantor is placing the blame for the spread of birtherism not on its authors or on those politicians playing along with it, but rather on Chris Matthews, MSNBC, lefty news outlets and bloggers.

So why is Eric Cantor blaming us for birtherism? As Greg points, the answer is simple. He's blaming us because he doesn't have the political courage to blame his own supporters -- most of whom are birthers.

And also too: Eric Cantor should explain how liberals managed to get Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, and the rest of the conservative establishment to embrace this loony-tunes conspiracy theory.

True, we're mocking the hell out of his crazy-ass, tin-foil hat wearing, regional rump political party. But honestly, how can you blame us?

BarbinMD (DK): Markos On The Birthers

Following the release today of Daily Kos' Research 2000 poll, Markos hit the airways to talk about the astounding number of Republicans who have joined the delusional birther brigade.

First on The Ed Show with Ed Schultz:

... and then on Countdown, guest-hosted tonight by Richard Wolffe:

Enjoy.