by Andrew Walden
He did it. Neil Abercrombie has finally made birtherism mainstream.
Distorting Abercrombie’s purposefully elliptical phrasing in a January 18 Star-Advertiser interview, the headline at World Net Daily (WND) blared “Hawaii governor can't find Obama birth certificate.” Then the hippie from Buffalo struck political paydirt. The UK Daily Mail yanked birtherism out of its WND echo chamber writing: “Abercrombie suggested that a long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate for Barack Obama may not exist.”
The WND and Daily Mail articles stayed up on the Drudge Report for days.
Abercrombie said no such thing. On Slate, Jan 21, Weigel takes it apart succinctly with his article, Fun New Birther Conspiracy Based Upon Illiteracy:
On January 18, Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie fielded a question from the Honolulu Star-Advertiser about Barack Obama's birth certificate. Abercrombie, who knew Barack Obama, Sr and Ann Dunham when they reared the future president, said the state had evidence of Obama's birth -- as spokespeople for the Department of Health have been saying since 2008. (They've confirmed this to me, too.)
"It was actually written, I am told," said Abercrombie, "this is what our investigation is showing, it actually exists in the archives, written down."
Here's the headline that got in a World Net Daily story by Jerome Corsi: “Hawaii governor can't find Obama birth certificate.”
Yes... that's not what he said at all, is it?
It should be no surprise that Abercrombie is doing everything he can to increase the visibility of birtherism. Hawai’i Free Press has been pointing out since 2008 that birtherism is a scam designed to divert conservatives into tin-foil-hat territory. Birthers serve Obama.
Birther lawyer Orly Taitz is a $1000 donor to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign committee. Her website has prominently featured the rants of 9-11 truther Devvy Kidd. Another leading birther lawyer, Phil Berg is a prominent 9-11 truther who sued the Bush administration several times in an effort to prove that al-Qaeda was innocent. “Wingnuts” author John Avalon rarely misses an opportunity to marginalize conservatives, but was forced to admit last February that “the Birthers began on the left.” Avalon traces the original August 21, 2008 Phil Berg birther lawsuit to the efforts of Texas Hillary Clinton supporter Linda Starr, described by Avalon as also being “a key source for CBS’ discredited election year investigation into George W. Bush’s National Guard records that led to Dan Rather’s replacement after 24 years as the evening news anchor.”
In spite of these facts, some have been drawn in. For instance, columnist Robert Paul Reyes on Hawaii Reporter writes: Gov. Neil Abercrombie Has Utterly Failed To Prove Obama Was Born In Hawaii.
But most conservative leaders are not fooled by the birther scam. On Meet the Press Sunday, House Republican Majority leader Rep Eric Cantor (R-VA) explained, “I don't think it's an issue that we need to address at all. It is not an issue that even needs to be on the policy-making table right now whatsoever.”
On his show Friday, radio host Rush Limbaugh pointed out:
This is just toying. He knows that the birthers are a bunch of Looney Tune kook right-wingers, and he wants them illustrated as such. So he'll toy with them, sort of like Charlie Brown and Lucy and the football. And the media went along with that, "Oh, that's Obama. He's really politically smart, really crafty here. He's got these birthers looking like the Birchers that they are. He's got 'em looking like the biggest kooks on the face of the earth…."
Now, it's still entirely possible all this is a giant head fake. For me, ladies and gentlemen, the sophisticated political figure that I am, it's really hard for me to believe that Neil Abercrombie just one day woke up on his own and without consultation said, "This birth thing bugs me. I'm gonna call a press conference, and I'm gonna tell people I was there when he was born, and I knew his mom and dad, and he was born here and I'm gonna prove it." I said earlier, Abercrombie's no fool. Many Hawaiians would disagree with me on that, many have. But if this guy is acting on his own as I have just described, that's unbelievable. The alternative is he's not acting on his own, this is all part of a continuing head fake and that at some point after a lot of people have gotten revved up cause now, the UK Daily Mail Online is more mainstream than anywhere else in America this has. Okay, so it ratchets up and ratchets up and then a couple years down the road, year and a half down the road, guess what, the thing's found, and, oh, can you imagine the air that will be let out of people's sails then?
Now, you have to ask yourself, is this regime capable of that kind of trick? Yeah, they are. Are they capable of having the newly elected governor, a Democrat, replacing a Republican, Neil Abercrombie, start out this whole thing? Are they typical, capable of coming up with a program where Abercrombie embarrasses himself around the world on this and then all of a sudden after, what would it be, six and a half, seven years, voila, somebody finds the birth certificate right out in the open in some file in Hawaii. With this bunch the point is you just never know….
I'll tell you why I think Abercrombie may just be toying around with everybody on this to pull a political trick later on down the line. Remember October 31st, 2008, there was a statement from the director of the Hawaii Department of Health. His (sic) name is Chiyome Fukino, and here is the statement. I mean, all Abercrombie would have to do is ask this guy because this guy in his statement says he's seen it.
HotAir blogger “AllahPundit” was a key player in the debunk of Linda Starr and Dan Rather’s forged George Bush National Guard documents. He is not fooled by Starr’s birther scam either. He writes Dopey Hawaii governor figures out new way to tease Birthers:
So there is some sort of written record — which jibes with what the state’s director of health has been saying all along — but because Abercrombie didn’t use the words “long-form birth certificate” or claim that he’s seen the document himself, somehow this magically transforms into him being unable to find anything in the file. What I think happened here is that this well-meaning doofus, who knew Obama’s parents personally and who’s indignant at the accusations about his citizenship, spoke up in anger with a vow to put them to rest. Which, entirely predictably to everyone except Abercrombie himself, kick-started a whole new round of excitement and expectations among Birthers, who’ll never be satisfied no matter what document is finally presented. The state could produce a birth certificate signed in the doctor’s blood and it’ll be dismissed instantly by true believers as a forgery. So this whole endeavor is counterproductive to Abercrombie’s goal, which I assume he’s now realizing and which explains why he might not be doggedly following up on his investigation. If he follows up and reveals a document — which he’s still not legally empowered to do — it’ll be declared bogus; if he decides to lay off and let this drop, it’ll be taken as proof that there’s no document in the file and he’s engaged in a cover-up for his pal Barack. This is the sort of shrewd, farsighted political mind who’s now at the head of Hawaii’s ship of state.
AND FINALLY ....Neal Boortz:
Why bring this up? If you listen to me you know that my position is that we should forget this birther stuff and just concentrate on defeating this dangerous man in 2012 and continuing to undo the damage he has done in his ongoing efforts to "radically transform" our Republic. But the Hawaii governor stepped up to say he was going to put the controversy to rest. It's time to perform. If he doesn't .... Then the controversy grows.
Of course, Abercrombie’s goal is not to “settle this birther thing once and for all”, Abercrombie’s goal is to stir up as much birtherism as possible prior to the 2012 elections.
ABC News straddled the line between birtherism and reality with this January 20 headline: Hawaii Gov. Says Proof of Obama's Birth Certificate Exists but Hasn't Produced the Document.
And on Jan 22, AP’s Mark Neisse reported “Hawaii law bars release of Obama birth info”:
State Attorney General David Louie told the governor that privacy laws bar him from disclosing an individual's birth documentation without the person's consent, Abercrombie spokeswoman Donalyn Dela Cruz said Friday.
"There is nothing more that Gov. Abercrombie can do within the law to produce a document," said Dela Cruz. "Unfortunately, there are conspirators who will continue to question the citizenship of our president."
Of course, there is nothing new about Hawaii’s privacy laws. Abercrombie, Neisse, Louie, and DelaCruz all know that. Hawaii law bars the release of birth records without a request from an immediate family member. If that were not the case, Obama’s original “long form” would have been brought out for all to see back in 2008. As Weigel said, "Fun New Birther Conspiracy Based Upon Illiteracy".
But just two months after Congressional Democrats received the worst mid term election drubbing for either party since 1948, Democrat media are doing everything they can to turn back the tide. First they blame conservatives for the actions of a schizophrenic, dope smoking, Bush-hating, 9-11 truther in Tucson, now they are spreading birtherism.
And Election Day is still 21 months away.
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