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Matt Romney, whose father, Mitt, is vying for commitments from Iowa GOP caucus voters this weekend, said his dad would release his financial records when President Obama “releases his grades and birth certificate.”
The younger Romney later insisted he was joking, but Barack Obama, in Hawaii now on a vacation estimated to set the taxpayers back some $4 million, saw it as an opportunity to cash in for his campaign. His 2012 fundraising machine immediately posted online: “The Birth Certificate Thing Again?”
“Matt Romney says his dad Mitt will release his tax returns ‘as soon as’ President Obama releases his birth certificate,” the campaign fundraising pitch by “Grant,” said today. “This is how the Romney campaign thinks it’s going to win the Republican primary: by pandering to the dead-ender fringe of extremists who still question where the president was born.”
The Obama campaign continued, “We can’t rewrite the other side’s talking points for them, but we can drive up the cost of this kind of politics. So we’re re-releasing our coffee mugs with the president’s birth certificate smack-dab on the side. Get yours today and remind the GOP what we all know is true – our president is made in the USA.”
The pitch didn’t explain how selling $20 mugs to those who presumably support Obama would drive up the cost for members of the GOP.
The questions over Obama’s birth certificate relate to his eligibility to be president, as the U.S. Constitution requires a president to be a “natural born citizen.” That’s not defined in the Constitution but constitutional experts have said that at the time the Constitution was written, it would have been considered to be the child of two citizen parents.
Freshly updated! Find out what Obama’s story truly is, in “Where’s the REAL Birth Certificate?” by Jerome Corsi. Or join in the billboard campaign that seeks the answer to “Where’s the Real Birth Certificate?”
Under that standard, Obama, does not qualify to be president, as his father was a subject to the British crown through his citizenship in Kenya at the time Obama was born. Others believe Obama was not born in the United States, and that the “Certification of Live Birth” image released on the Internet during the 2008 campaign and the subsequent “Certificate of Live Birth” released online by the White House this year are creations of various software programs in use today.
Obama has refused to allow access to whatever original documentation there might be in the state of Hawaii, where he said he was born, as well as many other documents, such as passport records, kindergarten records, Punahou school records, Occidental College records, Columbia University records, Columbia thesis, Harvard Law School records, Harvard Law Review articles, University of Chicago articles, Illinois State Bar Association records, Illinois State Senate records and schedules, medical records, Obama/Dunham marriage license, Obama/Dunham divorce documents, Soetoro/Dunham marriage license and adoption records.
According to a Talking Points Memo report, Matt Romney was talking with a reporter Thursday on the topic of documents and candidates’ information.
“He’s certainly not afraid of anything, he’s not hiding anything,” he said of his father in a video recorded by a Patch reporter in New Hampshire, reported TPM.
“But I heard someone suggest the other day that as soon as President Obama releases his grades and birth certificate and sort of a long list of things, that maybe he’d do that,” Matt Romney said.
Matt immediately noted “that’s a suggestion from someone else.”
Later yet, TPM said, Matt Romney tweeted, “I repeated a dumb joke. My bad.”
 Barack Obama |
But the “dead-ender fringe of extremists,” as the Obama campaign described those who continue to have questions about the information Obama hasn’t released, includes a significant number of the Iowa GOP voters attending caucuses in just a few days. And even signficant numbers of Democrats and independents across the country have questions.
A recent Public Policy Polling report noted that one in three Iowa GOP members do not believe Obama was born in the United States – an indication of their disbelief about his eligibility to be president.
Another 21 percent were not sure. Some 47 percent said they believe he was born in the United States, but they didn’t address the argument that the “natural born citizen” requirement demands parents who are citizens.
The question asked, “Do you think that Barack Obama was born in the United States, or not?”
WND reported that another poll earlier this year showed half of registered voters would like to see Congress investigate Obama’s eligibility. It also showed nearly that many believe the definition of the constitutional term “natural born citizen” means both parents must be U.S. citizens.
“There’s no marginalizing those who want this matter investigated by Congress,” said Fritz Wenzel of Wenzel Strategies after conducting the WND/Wenzel Poll telephone survey during the summer.
“Even among Democrats, more than one in four – 28 percent – said they now want an inquiry, as do 43 percent of independents and 77 percent of Republicans. Interestingly, men are much more skeptical than are women about the question of eligibility – only 42 percent of men said they think Obama proved his eligibility by releasing the electronic birth certificate, compared to 59 percent of women.”
The poll at that time indicated 43.5 percent of Americans believe that a Hawaii birth would make no difference in Obama’s eligibility. The figure included 56.9 percent of Republicans, 40.2 percent of independents and 32.9 percent of Democrats.
The eligibility saga, as Wenzel noted, has taken on a life of its own. It began with questions about Obama’s birth place and parentage before his election. At that time, he released a computer image of a short-form “Certification of Live Birth” from Hawaii and insisted it was original and the only document available.
Then in April, just as a new book, “Where’s the Birth Certificate? The Case that Barack Obama is Not Eligible to Be President,” by Jerome Corsi, Ph.D., reached the No. 1 spot on Amazon and was about to be released, Obama took a dramatic step.
He instructed his White House counsel, Robert Bauer, to have a private attorney, Judy Corley of Perkins Coie, contact the Hawaii Department of Health to obtain a copy of his “Certificate of Live Birth” purportedly on file with the state.
The White House subsequently released copies of a copy of the document, as well as an online image, calling it “proof positive” of a Hawaii birth. Since then, however, dozens of experts, including several ex-CIA members, have asserted that the document is fraudulent.
The image:
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At its release, WND contacted the Hawaii Health Department and the office of Gov. Neil Abercrombie, an ardent Obama supporter, to request confirmation that the image released was an accurate representation of the state’s file information. Officials declined to respond.
A constitutional expert recently weighed in on the the issue and concluded that the obvious meaning of the term “natural born citizen,” which is not defined in the Constitution, is someone who obtains citizenship naturally, from citizen parents, and not from any act of Congress or other affirmative action.
“Obama came into office with such fanfare and made such sweeping claims that his administration would repair holes in our social fabric and fix our economy, but America has seen none of that. Disappointment has given way to disillusionment and anger, and this survey reveals that even on a simple, basic question of his qualification to hold the office of president, many are skeptical that what the White House has delivered is not at all what was advertised,” Wenzel said.
“There are many reasons this eligibility question has taken on a life of its own, but that only half the country [in the Wenzel poll] believes that the president has proven he deserves to hold the office reveals a deeply held belief that he is somehow trying to trick the country. This sense of distrust underlies public perception of everything Obama does and says, which means that, as he begins to build a re-election campaign, it is going to be increasingly difficult for him to make a case on any issue as long as this question about the authenticity of his birth certificate remains unanswered. In fact, releasing the birth certificate that Obama released may have made worse his standing with the American people, and that will certainly be the case if a congressional inquiry discovers it has been tampered with or forged,” Wenzel warned.
Just days after the White House released the “birth certificate” image, Gallup reported that only 47 percent think Obama was definitely was born in the U.S. and 18 percent said he “probably” was.
Obama released the image saying he had no time for such silliness as questions about his birth, then departed for an appearance on Oprah’s television show.
It was only a few months after Obama’s inauguration that a WND/Wenzel Poll
showed that 51.3 percent of Americans said they were aware of the
questions raised about Obama’s constitutional eligibility for office.
Only 18.7 percent said they were not and another 30 percent were
unsure.
At that point, 58.2 percent of Republicans said they were aware of the controversy.
Polls later revealed Americans to be increasingly skeptical of Obama’s official narrative:
- A survey by Angus Reid Global Monitor, a division of Vision Critical Group, in October 2009 found three in 10 people in the U.S. believed Obama to be a foreigner.
“While
only 13 percent of Democratic Party supporters believe Obama was not
born in the U.S., the proportion rises to 25 percent among independents
and 51 percent among Republican Party backers,” the report said. - Then in January 2010, another WND/Wenzel Poll
showed on the one-year anniversary of Obama’s tenure in office that
fully one-third of Americans refused to believe Obama was a “legitimate
president,” with another 15.8 percent saying they were not sure.Barely half the voters, 51.5 percent, said they believed the president
legitimate even though he had not produced documentation
proving his constitutional eligibility. Even 14.6 percent of the
Democrats said they did not consider him legitimate. - In May 2010, a WND/Wenzel Poll showed that 55 percent of Americans wanted Obama to release all records
relating to his childhood and his education, including “college
records, Harvard Law School papers, passport records, travel records,
and other similar documentation.”“Asked what should be done should it be found that Obama does not meet
the qualifications to be president, 59 percent said he should be
removed from office, and 35 percent said all bills signed into law by
Obama should be repealed,” the poll’s analysis revealed. - By June 2010, other media were beginning to put their toes in the waters of the controversy.
A 60 Minutes-Vanity Fair poll showed only 39 percent of respondents
believed Obama was born in Hawaii as he claimed in his book.“A shocking 63 percent – very nearly two-thirds of us – went out on a
limb and stated for the record that we believe in the United States.
It’s enough to make you proud to be an American – or 63 percent proud,
at any rate.”But that figure included those who said they believe he was born in
Kansas or some other unknown state, which still would conflict with
Obama’s story. - In later 2010, a poll by CNN
said 6 of 10 people were uncertain Obama was born in the U.S. The poll
said only 42 percent believe Obama “definitely” was born in the U.S.The CNN report said, “Hawaii has released a copy of the
president’s birth certificate – officially called a ‘certificate of
live birth.’ And in 1961 the hospital where the president was born
placed announcements in two Hawaiian newspapers regarding Obama’s
birth.”
WND founder and CEO Joseph Farah has developed a campaign to put the question before the American public. He most recently flew a banner over an NFL game in Dallas. Following that, CNN’s Anderson Cooper discussed the Obama eligibility question.
He called the banner that was flown before the matchup between the Dallas Cowboys and New York Giants the “banner to nowhere,” noting the stadium’s closed roof. He wondered just how people were supposed to see it.
He didn’t mention that the roof typically is open during the pregame time period when the banner flew, and even as it closed, fans presumably were walking from the parking to the stadium before the game when the banner was flying.
His comments:
Cooper called WND’s banner “about the spin.”
“I’d go so far as to say WND has more spin than a club DJ reading Spin magazine while sitting on a washing machine … and the DJ also just got back from his spin class. I just thought of that one,” he said.
He said the banner was visible mostly to “passed-out tail-gating stragglers in a mostly empty stadium parking lot.”
And he suggested, “Just as a public service in case you want to be involved in supporting this kind of high-flying effort in futility, maybe hop on over to the WND Superstore and buy one of their ‘Where’s the Birth Certificate?’ yard signs.”
Farah noted that while CNN was calling the banner a waste of money, the network was putting it before many more viewers.
“Isn’t that funny – as CNN airs video footage of the stunt! I know CNN’s ratings are hurting, too, but Cooper provided a virtual infomercial – including pitching ‘Where’s the real birth certificate?’ yard signs on sale in the WND Superstore,” said Farah.
The banner contained a special message for the man who calls himself president of the United States.
The banner was originally set to fly above the same stadium during the Cowboys’ annual Thanksgiving Day game but had to be postponed due to inclement weather.
“This flyover is another manifestation of our national billboard campaign that began three years ago, asking simply, ‘Where’s the birth certificate?'” explained Farah, founder of WND. “The question today is, ‘Where’s the REAL birth certificate?’ since Jerome Corsi’s new e-book on the subject completely discredits its validity. We have used billboards because the rest of the media refuses to address seriously the problems of Obama’s eligibility. And we will continue to use other creative efforts to address one of the most serious constitutional questions facing our country, namely, ‘Is Obama actually eligible for office?'”
