We could have a battle of the birthers on our hands. We know all about the Obama birthers, but now it seems that there is a group of crazy people who think Mitt Romney isn’t eligible to be president either. BuzzFeed has the details:
But, as it turns out, Romney has his set of detractors questioning his American citizenship — an Internet subculture that embodies the sort of rubber-and-glue politics that’s helped define this election, and one that reflects the way fringe voters translate suspicion of a candidate in the Obama era.
The Romney birthers’ predominant theory is that because George Romney was born in Mexico, his candidate son is not a natural-born citizen, and therefore Constitutionally ineligible to occupy the Oval Office. (This theory has the unfortunate side-effect of disqualifying President Chester Arthur, the son of an immigrant from Ireland.)
Others believe the younger Romney was, himself, born in Mexico; others point to supposed evidence that his birth certificate is a fraud — and a few even contend that he was raised up by Mormon polygamists to be a presidential plant. But the bottom line for all of them is that Mitt just isn’t American enough to be president.
Orly Taitz to the batshit phone. Now if only he names Marco Rubio as his VP, we’ll have the perfect birther storm.
23 comments
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flatlander100
June 13, 2012 at 10:41 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Aha! I knew that lefty liberal socialist comsymp Arthur wasn’t a real ‘Merkin! At last someone has had the courage to tell the truth!
Reginald Selkirk
June 13, 2012 at 10:49 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Oh, I thought this was going to be the prove Romney is not a unicorn thing.
helenaconstantine
June 13, 2012 at 10:49 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I assure flatlander100 that Arthur was not wig designed to simulate female pubic hair.
Aliasalpha
June 13, 2012 at 10:58 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
A presidential plant? Given his stance on every side of every issue whenever it’s most convenient, I suspect he’s not so much A plant as a frankensteinian mishmash of every type of plant imaginable, ‘just in case’, kind of a botanical borg collective
cptdoom
June 13, 2012 at 10:59 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ironically, the issue of his birthplace never came up with George Romney was running for President, although his citizenship bona fides were much shakier than Obama’s. There are reports that George Romney’s grandparents denounced their citizenship when they fled to Mexico to create a polygamous compound, although they were allowed back into the country without any issue, IIRC, when Mexico began cracking down on the rebellious Mormons. Apparently America was a bit less crazy forty years ago.
Raging Bee
June 13, 2012 at 11:00 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
BuzzFeed has the details…
No, actually, it doesn’t. The article is titled “Meet The Romney Birthers,” but we’re only introduced to one actual person, with vague references to “the fever swamps of the web” and “a community of fellow skeptics online.” So far at least, there’s no evidence that this “movement” is anything more than a handful of irelevant loonies — or a Republican sock-puppet.
Pen
June 13, 2012 at 11:08 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Surely they must be taking the mickey? Please tell me they are? Also isn’t it amazing how just about anyone whose ever breathed American air is American for tax purposes?
slc1
June 13, 2012 at 11:10 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Re cptdoom @ #5
Ironically, the issue of his birthplace never came up with George Romney was running for President,
Not true. Questions were raised at the time as to whether the Mexican born Romney pere was a natural born American citizen. It didn’t become a big issue because Romney’s brainwashing comment took him out of the race before his candidacy became serious enough to warrant the lamestream media making an issue of it (the media was much less lamestream then then it is now).
dingojack
June 13, 2012 at 11:14 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Raging Bee – a simple Google search using “Mitt Romney” and “Birth Certificate” comes up with over 4.6 million pages, including this*.
One very busy little lone sockpuppet!
Dingo
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* I’m using this as an example, I’m not vouching for it’s accuratcy or even veracity.
Raging Bee
June 13, 2012 at 11:16 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
There are reports that George Romney’s grandparents denounced their citizenship when they fled to Mexico to create a polygamous compound, although they were allowed back into the country without any issue…
That would be SOME of Mitt’s GREAT-GRANDPARENTS. If they’d stayed in the US since then, they (not to mention their descendants) would have had PLENTY of time to sort out any citizenship problems they might have had. (Also, if the great-grandparents were allowed back in, that’s kind of a de-facto acknowledgement that the government either ignored their renunciation of citizenship (i.e., the document got “lost” somewhere), or re-granted them citizenship. So no, neither Romney’s “bona fides” are at all “shaky.”
Mutt Romney is a despicable spineless pandering fascist sack of shit — but he IS legally eligible to be President. I’m willing to bet this whole “Romney birther” thing is nothing but a Republican diversion.
fifthdentist
June 13, 2012 at 11:20 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Obviously the fine lefty birfers are “just asking questions.”
Mittens should be glad to answer their crazy questions — that is, unless he has something to hide.
What is Mittens hiding? Why won’t he answer the questions? Where is his long-form birth certificate? Was salsa his father’s favorite condiment?
Trebuchet
June 13, 2012 at 11:20 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
A couple of interesting things in that BuzzFeed article. One is Romney’s “Certificate of Live Birth”, which all good wingnuts know is NOT the same as a “Birth Certificate”. The other is this:
Which is yet more evidence of the stopped clock hypothesis.
dogmeat
June 13, 2012 at 11:24 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
One has to wonder if Mitt adopted his fathers radical anti-colonialism, you know how Mexico revolted against their legitimate colonial rulers, much like Kenya, radicalism in Mexico isn’t what we want here in the US!!! Show us the long form!
Sad thing is, the comments thread almost immediately turned into an Obama-birtherism chat group. One wonders if some of this is a new attempt to give birtherism another go-around. It’s obvious the guy is a citizen so then they can bring up the “questions” about Obama having proved that their guy is a citizen. A few years ago I would have considered the idea moronic, now it could be seen as mainstream GOP “logic.”
Raging Bee
June 13, 2012 at 11:33 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
dingo: I just did that search, and guess what — I got 4.1 million hits (as opposed to 119 milion hits for “hollow earth”), but that’s because there’s shitloads of articles that have at least one of those words (Mitt, Romney, Birth, Certificate) in them. And articles alleging Mittens is ineligible to be President didn’t even fill up the first page of hits.
So yeah, this is just a diversionary manufactroversy based on a handful of irrelevant cranks. What’s next — rumors of a huge groundswell of Hollow Earth lunacy?
eric
June 13, 2012 at 11:38 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“The Moronian Candidate.” Heh.
Randomfactor
June 13, 2012 at 11:56 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
rMoney’s not releasing his long-form birth certificate because it reveals his middle name is actually “Milton,” not “Mitt.”
And any supposed “long-form” certificate that doesn’t is obviously a forgery.
Area Man
June 13, 2012 at 12:16 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Meh. Get back to us when elected officials start abusing their offices to launch bogus investigations of Romney, and when the leaders of a major political party refuse to give a straight answer to the question of his birthplace so as to imply that he just might be lying about the whole thing.
d cwilson
June 13, 2012 at 12:36 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
cptdoom:
Not necessarily. There were people who questioned whether Barry Goldwater was a natural born citizen due to the fact that he was born in Arizona before it became a state.
Ed:
Well, he has the personality of a house plant.
Area Man:
I’m sure Sheriff Joe is all over it.
Raging Bee
June 13, 2012 at 12:56 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Another thing: if there was ever any truth to these rumors, why didn’t Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum or Ron Paul pick up on it when it could have made a difference? It’s not like Romney’s desire to run for President caught everyone by surprise.
(I notice the one live person identified as a “Romney birther” is a paultard — which only further proves my theory that Ron Paul and his idiot posse only pretend to fight the Republican establishment when it doesn’t matter.)
abear
June 13, 2012 at 1:30 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Something that should be investigated is why Romney needs multiple, large houses with secretive underground garages. Is he hiding multiple wives and children?
He isn’t terribly forthcoming about his finances and even has money squirreled away in offshore banks. Is that how he covers up the financing of his occult celestial marriages?
Trump and Arpaio need to call back their crack investigators from Hawaii and send them to Salt Lake City!
jufulu
June 13, 2012 at 2:40 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
In addition to the birther stuff, some are saying that Romney helped Glenn Beck kill a young girl in 1990. I’ve heard them say that the reason that he wasn’t arrested was that the authorities couldn’t prove he was a citizen. It all ties together. When I Googled it, I couldn’t find anywhere were Romney denies it. I don’t know if it’s true, but that’s what some people are saying.
abb3w
June 13, 2012 at 3:00 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
These people are idiots.
The bronies who claim Romney is ineligible because he’s a unicorn, however, are funny.
tfkreference
June 13, 2012 at 8:03 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Yeah, the unicorn thing is more credible.