Looks as though I missed another Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy chapter meeting

Darn, sounds as though assignments were given out too:

“I can’t spend all of my time with my birth certificate plastered on my forehead,” quipped Obama, who took a deep breath to gather his thoughts when asked if the poll reflected his inability to communicate with voters.

“The facts are the facts. We went through some of this during the campaign — there is a mechanism, a network of misinformation that in a new media era can get churned out there constantly,” said a visibly annoyed Obama, referring to “birthers,” who have waged a guerrilla campaign questioning either the existence or the validity of his Hawaiian birth certificate.

“I will always put my money on the American people, and I’m not going to be worried too much about what rumors are floating around there.”

Actually he is right on that last part, there is no need to worry about the rumors floating around when the facts are downright dismal.  Nevertheless, Obama can never quite bring himself to put the whole "birther" issue to rest can he?  Nobody ever asked him to walk around with his birth certificate plastered to his forehead but he could release the darn thing and end this line of inquiry forever.  Of course he will never do that because it gives him the opportunity to portray those who oppose him as a fringe group of crazies.

The "birther" issue also serves as a perfect deflection from the larger question why Americans feel as though they don't really know who he is.  Obama was asked, in an interview with Brian Williams, about a poll  showing nearly half of Americans have no idea what religion Obama follows.  The same poll showed that 18% believed he was a Muslim while 34% identified him as a Christian.  Obama dismissed the results of the poll and focused instead on a network of conservatives churning out misinformation he is a Muslim who wan't born in the United States.  Way to dodge the question Barack.

Peggy Noonan addressed the question the other day in The Wall Street Journal:

Liberals and the left are indignant about this, and angry. For a week all you heard from cable anchors was "PEOPLE think OBAMA is a MUSLIM. It's in the POLLS. How do you EXPLAIN it?" Every time I heard it, I'd think: Maybe it's because you keep screaming it.

Some of the reason for the relatively high number of people who believe he holds to one faith when in fact he has always said he holds to another, is the steady drumbeat of the voices arrayed against Mr. Obama, that are arrayed against any modern president, and will be against the next one too. But surely some of it is that a lot of people are just trying to figure him out. In that atmosphere they'll consider everything.

When the American people have looked at the presidents of the past few decades they could always sort of say, "I know that guy." Bill Clinton: Southern governor. Good ol' boy, drawlin', flirtin', got himself a Rhodes Scholarship. "I know that guy." George W. Bush: Texan, little rough around the edges, good family, youthful high jinks, stopped drinking, got serious. "I know that guy." Ronald Reagan was harder to peg, but you still knew him: small-town Midwesterner, moved on and up, serious about politics, humorous, patriotic. "I know that guy." Barack Obama? Sleek, cerebral, detached, an academic from Chicago by way of Hawaii and Indonesia. "You know what? I don't know that guy!"

He doesn't fit any categories. He won in 2008 by 9.5 million votes anyway because he was a break with Mr. Bush, and people assumed they'd get to know him. But his more unusual political decisions, and the sometimes contradictory and confusing nature of his leadership, haven't ameliorated or done away with his unusualness. They've heightened it.

Noonan believes that Americans may yet discover they know Obama; they'll see him as the moderate when the newly-elected Republican-controlled Congress devolves into a freak show.  I find it difficult to imagine any freak show out-freaking the current freak show.  Sure there are plenty who are still worried Republicans haven't learned their lesson but I imagine we will at least be spared the Christmas Eve votes for ObamaCare at a minimum.  We may even get someone who can help Obama with his Mary Poppins problem.  Say, I wonder if that fence was a plot conceived at a VRWC chapter meeting.

Dems Plan to Take Low Road to Certain Defeat in November

We should have seen this coming after the sorry defeat in Massachusetts.   Democrats blatantly claimed Coakley failed to negatively define Brown early on in the race; they won't make that mistake again.  CNN obtained a secret DSCC memo outlining the strategy for the midterm elections though the contents appear to be entirely predictable:

Given the pressure Republican candidates feel from the extreme right in their party, there is a critical - yet time-sensitive –opportunity for Democratic candidates," a DSCC memo, obtained by CNN, states. "We have a finite window when Republicans candidates will feel susceptible to the extremists in their party. Given the urgent nature of this dynamic, we suggest an aggressive effort to get your opponents on the record."

Specifically, the DSCC wants Democratic candidates to pin down their likely opponents on several hot-button issues, including:

- Do you believe that Barack Obama is a U.S.citizen?

- Do you think the Tenth Amendment bars Congress from issuing regulations like minimum healthcare coverage standards?

- Do you think programs like Social Security and Medicare represent socialism, and should never have been created in the first place?

- Do you think President Obama is a socialist?

- Do you think America should return to a gold standard?

This is straight out of a Chris Matthews MSNBC interview, I hope they didn't pay anyone big money to come up with this.

The NRSC has released its' own set of substantive questions such as "do you believe the $787 billion stimulus worked" and this little gem:

 Do you believe the Obama Administration was correct when they gave the Christmas Day bomber a lawyer and the right to remain silent before our intelligence professionals had the opportunity to question him about other potential attacks on the United States?

 I believe it was either Frank Luntz or another pollster who said this particular issue tested very very high even among Democrats in Massachusetts.  Brown emphasized this point in his victory speech last week and repeated it often on the campaign trail.  It might be more difficult for Democrats who complained for years about Guantanamo Bay to find a balance between their hard left base and main stream America who happen to believe terrorists shouldn't get the same rights as US citizens.  Democrats can squawk all they want about teabaggers and birthers, it isn't likely to fool the Independents who witnessed Democrats with complete control of the government.  They appear to have been unimpressed but a lot of  name calling ought to bring them around.

Not-So-Subtle Advice for Birthers

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has a post in reference to a Politico piece on "birthers." Minnesota Representative Peterson(D)complains he can't talk to his constituents because they are all crazy or something. Notwithstanding Peterson's ridiculous claim, Ed Morrissey makes a great point about the sudden emergence of the birthers as fodder for the MSM who would like to paint the GOP as a bunch of "loons:"

On the overall Birther issue, it’s becoming a problem for Republicans. We have people like Chris Matthews helping to fuel it, not because Matthews has objective journalistic instincts, but because he knows he can make all Republicans look like loons — and encourage more Birthers to get vocal. Just when we need all the credibility we can muster to fight against ObamaCare and cap-and-tax, it’s getting sapped by the conspiracy theorists.

Ed is completely right, this is no time to feed the MSM machine to paint the GOP as crazy, especially as this diversion is entirely intended to create a distraction from Obama's falling polls and health care plan that is on the ropes to put it mildly. For those who wish to help Matthews and his journalistic ilk, here is my advice: