By William A. Jacobson
Legal Insurrection
August 6, 2010
Ever since Hillary Clinton supporters started circulating claims that Obama was not born in the United States, Obama's supporters and strategists have taken a very aggressive posture.
Almost any attempt to discuss the subject is met with a furious response from Media Matters, Think Progress, their progeny in the blogosphere, and the mainstream media.
It that were all there were to the strategy, it would not be so different than strategies a lot of campaigns use to fight what they believe to be smears. The dilemma is that if you engage in the debate, you might give credence to the claims, but if you don't, it's hard to convince people otherwise.
But the strategy has gone far beyond confrontation. Political opponents who do not even question Obama's birthplace are branded "Birthers" as a political tactic.
For example, I documented how during the Brown-Coakley election in Massachusetts, Democratic operatives fabricated the charge that Brown was a "Birther." A similar tactic was used against Sharron Angle. The entire Tea Party movement has been branded "Birthers" by leading Democrats.
As a strategy, the hyper-aggressiveness has been brilliant in the short run. The accusation of being a "Birther" is right up there with the accusation of being a Racist in the Democratic Party's tool kit, and is politically toxic.
But as I wrote in July 2009, and again in February 2010, Obama was misplaying the "Birther" card because the frequency of the strategic accusations merely raised the public consciousness and suggested that Obama was hiding something. Far from disproving the claims of "Birthers," the Obama strategy simply drove the issue below the surface.
Read more . . .
[Ed. William Jacobsen is an Associate Clinical Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. He also runs an excellent blog called Le-gal In-sur-rec-tion.]
It's good to see that someone else with a "voice" from a law school is espousing the idea that the Obama "demonization" tactic has not worked and is now working against the man and his pals.
ReplyDelete"The dilemma is that if you engage in the debate, you might give credence to the claims, but if you don't, it's hard to convince people otherwise."
ReplyDeleteAs far as I'm concerned, there are several blogs that have, in fact, engaged in the debate, and quite aggressively I might add.
As a result, I have called them on it several times, questioning their need to be so vocal about their support of something that just 'is' already. I mean, Obama 'is' president, so why would any of his supporters feel the need to so aggressively argue that he should be there - he 'is' there. My example is the Bush/Gore fiasco. Bush 'was' president and since I was of the opinion that he should have been, I didn't feel the need to blog aggressively in support of him, as I felt reasonably comfortable that he would remain President.
Of course, the response to my posts are a lot of name calling and bashing - personally, because I think they know I'm right about my assessment. :)
Obama and his enablers have no choice but to "stifle" the debate on his eligibility.
ReplyDeleteIf a debate occurs, Obama loses. From his father never being an American citizen, to the sealed records of his past, to a "COLB" with absolutely no traceable information, no doctors name, no hospital name, no witnesses name(s), no home street address, no parents occupation, no registrars names, no signatures of anyone...in short. a COLB that by design cannot be used to verify anything, Obama is on very shaky ground the minute eligibility comes up. Many reports on him being "Kenyan born" are available from news sources around the world....and then there is the possible adoption....we know at one point his name was "Barry Soetoro", Indonesian school records prove it.
The biggest con job in history was carried out in the 2008 election to insure that a "historic first black president" was elected, it was "Damn the Constitution, full speed ahead".
That the federal government has used it's assumed powers to thwart the proper defense of the constitution is remarkable, it is tyranical. The truth wil come out and at that time I would hope there are prosecutions for fraud and misprision of felony. That is the least charges since it may be revealed that the "progressives" are in reality the CPUSA's subsidary organization and through the force of deception have usurped control of our government which is proscribed under US Code Title 50 Sec 842. " Proscription of Communist Party, its successors, and subsidiary organizations" One may simply read the Kagan thesis to understand what went awry within the communist movement in the early part of the 1900's to see that the remedy was finally employed in the runup to the 2008 election. Once one reads all the documentation and laws one can appreciate the danger we are in and the fact that legal remedies have been negated by the usurpers. That leaves but one final solution, the electoral one, until the military is charged with the law enforcement duty as misprision describes. Failing that, there is always the founders solution, a test of might.
ReplyDelete