A Plan Was Hatched – Obama Was Not

Obama didn’t release his birth certificate to shut down the birthers – he did it to label the entirety of the right as “carnival barkers.”

On April 27th, Obama finally put the birth certificate thing to rest for the majority of Americans .. we think. The conspiracy theorists are already using Adobe’s natural behavior to prove that the certificate is a fake and the anti-conspiracy theorists are pointing out how the conspiracy guys are wrong. We’ve even see how some believe that by releasing his birth certificate, Obama may have sealed his fate as a one term President. Everyone is wrong.

In listening to Obama’s comments on the release of his long form birth certificate I heard things that made me cringe. He isn’t releasing this to shut the right up, he’s hoping Conservatives go off the deep-end and push the conspiracy until there is a guy on the grassy gnoll with a second optical scanner, copy machine or birth certificate.

We’re not going to be able to do it if we just make stuff up and pretend that facts are not facts.  We’re not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers.

When GOP candidates start re-visiting Obama’s Presidential record and reminding the electorate of the absolute blunders, mis-truths and lies – he will remind us that the right has been proven wrong time-and-time again on their so-called facts. “They just make stuff up”, the President will say, “just like that whole birth certificate thing”. And images of Trumps idiotic prancing about the country, re-invigorating the issue that most of us had let die, just to have the entire right look like fringe lunatics – exactly the strategy that killed Sharron Angle’s bid to unseat Harry Reid.

As if it weren’t enough, Donald Trump today pressed the issue by giving the conspiracy theorists a bone:

Now we have to look at it. We have to see is it real? Is it proper? What’s on it? But I hope it checks out beautifully.

“Sideshows and Carnival barkers..” with Donald Trump as the front-and-center image – this is a well-thought plan to get the moderates to distance themselves from anything remotely right-of-center.

The Plan

1. Create an image of a group of crazy people – check
2. Get Trump to work them into a frenzy – check
3. Prove them all wrong – check
4. Have Trump get them to push the conspiracy anyway – check
5. Use the cemented image that the right is all a bunch of crazy people to win re-election – in-progress

In a Washington Post article entitled “An embarrassment to the country”, Adam Serwer started executing step 5:

Trump’s lunacy emboldened conservative media sources to fully embrace birtherism. According to Media Matters, Fox News has spent over two hours promoting false claims about Obama’s birthplace across 54 segments, and only in ten did Fox News hosts challenge those claims.

Examine Bernanke’s comments at the Federal Reserve press conference, debate the real cause of fuel, food and clothing prices rising while home prices plummet, discuss China’s approach to overtaking the United States as the world’s predominate economy – do any of those, but leave the fricken birth certificate to die.