Some Notable Changes

From the beginning of his candidacy for President until as recently as last week, there has been a group known as the “birthers” who have insisted that President Obama was born in Kenya, despite having seen what Hawaii calls his certificate of live birth.

What lent credence to their theory was the version provided by Obama. Hawaii has two versions of this certificate, the original and a shortened version provided as proof of birth. You have to ask for the long version and show extenuating circumstances before the state will provide it.

Obama did just that and last week provided, in essence, the same information the birthers refused to accept until the long version made its appearance. And for the first time in his presidency, no one can now deny that President Obama is as American as apple pie and constitutionally qualified to serve as President.

Another rumor subscribed to by essentially the same crowd said that the President was a secret Muslim and that it was his intent to destroy the U. S. from within. Even Franklin Graham, son of the Rev. Billy Graham, proclaimed that Obama was a Muslim because his father was a Muslim, and apparently Obama had no choice in the matter because the son is what the father was.

Graham did acknowledge that the President had renounced the prophet Mohammed and was a Christian now. That’s what he (Obama) said, Graham graciously proclaimed, and I’ll take him at his word, echoing the exact sentiments of several prominent GOP politicians, including Kentucky’s senior U. S. Senator, Mitch McConnell.

You have to wonder how this rumor will stand up now that the country, under Obama’s direction, has managed to hunt down and kill Osama bin Laden, the man whose name these same people “confused” with the President’s at times. Speaking of the mission, Obama told the nation that he had ordered the director of the CIA to make finding bin Laden its top priority.

Not that every prominent Republican politician has followed these lines of thinking, however. One notable exception to this is a man by the name of David Frumm. Frumm is a former economic speech writer for President George W. Bush. He is as conservative as anyone in the GOP, but he has openly disagreed with those who have attempted to paint President Obama with these broad brushes.

In his blog called the Frumm Forum, Frumm questions how what he calls “poisonous and not very subtly racist allegation(s)” manage to get such a serious hold on the conservative movement. And that is his answer, that it is racism, pure and simple. For example, once Obama produced an acceptable certificate, Donald Trump began questioning his educational qualifications, despite the fact the President Obama graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School and was editor of the law review.

This is, according to Frumm, an “implied message about who counts and who does not count as a ‘real American.’” Frumm recalls the words of Sen. John McCain, AZ, on election night who spoke about the racial hatred the nation had left behind with the election of Obama, and finishes with a warning that continuing in this vein endangers the future of the party by alienating those voters it must win in order to survive.