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Days Before RNC Featuring Two Birther Speakers, Romney Makes Birther 'Joke'

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simoom8/24/2012 11:48:57 am PDT

This actually seems to be representative of the main pushback the RW blogs (Malkin, Redstate, etc) are going with:

The idea seems to be that because President Obama, his campaign and surrogates have mocked Birtherism through humor, that means they’ve told Birther jokes too, so they’re hypocrits and they’re trying to unfairly reserve the privilege of telling Birther jokes to themselves.

There seems to be a fundamental lack of understanding as to the clear differance between mocking bigoted idiocy and pandering to it in front of a receptive audience:

buzzfeed.com

Meanwhile, the reaction from the crowd of Republicans here was largely enthusiastic, with some laughing it off as a politically incorrect joke, and others treating it as a welcome attack on what they believe to be the coverup of the president’s birthplace.

Asked what he made of Romney’s line, Jim Barzakov, a retiree from Berryville, MI, expressed frustration with reporters’ fixation on the issue.

“What is it with this birth certificate? It’s every question I get from you guys!” he said. “You must be all liberals! What kind of a question is that?”

He then said the meaning of the line was simple: “It says Romney has his birth certificate; Obama can’t find his.” Asked about the certificate the White House released last year, Barzakov dismissed it as a “photoshop certificate.”

Terese Cayline, who works at a real estate management company in Waterford, MI, said she doesn’t consider herself a “birther” — but raised several of the talking points espoused by skeptics of the president’s birth certificate.

“[Romney] was born and raised in Michigan and as far as Obama goes, his grandma was there at his birth and his grandma has never been outside Kenya,” Cayline said. “So I find it ironic that he won’t show the real birth certificate.”