50% of Southerners Don't Think Obama Was Born in U.S.: Why Republican Politicians Are Skittish in Opposing the Birthers

Here's some more birther lunacy exposed.

World Net Daily has done it! They've finally proven that President Obama was, in fact, born in Kenya:

The document lists Obama's parents as Barack Hussein Obama and Stanley Ann Obama, formerly Stanley Ann Dunham, the birth date as Aug. 4, 1961, and the hospital of birth as Coast General Hospital in Mombasa, Kenya. Read on...

There's just one teensy little problem here -- The Republic of Kenya didn't exist until 1964 -- three years after Obama's birth. Right wing blog Little Green Footballs is calling this a hoax, but leave it to the nutbags at Free Republic to take the debunked myth to a whole new level.

And they're not the only ones. Never mind that his birth certificate has been plastered on the web well before July 15, the date of the post...they still rant on and on...

And there are other plenty of other things in the South that are acceptable mainstream positions. I digress.

Help.

Damn. That's, like, all of the white people in the South, too, 'cause there's a snowball's chance in Hell of black people believing that tripe.

Now I want to see the correlation between this and the belief that Obama is a "sekrit Muslim."

Having been born and brought up below the Mason-Dixon Line myself, I would think this poll is skewed. They should first have asked each person "Are you living in the United States?"

You still meet a lot of white folks of the "Forget, Hell!" variety.

That's, like, all of the white people in the South, too, 'cause there's a snowball's chance in Hell of black people believing that tripe.

Two words: "Alan Keyes."

Batshit insane is color blind.

Although in the South you do have the "birferism as a way to justify rejecting the uppity nigger in the White House" effect.

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PS:
s/four percent of Democrats and eight percent of independents thought so/four percent of Democrats and eight percent of independents thought not/

Thanks for the link Mike. Incidentally, we feel a "Not Sure" response to the Obama question could be reasonably interpreted as close to "No" considering that it's more likely someone had some reservations or just wouldn't want to answer No, than honestly not be sure if the US President is a natural born citizen of the US. With that caveat, the regional breakdown becomes even more pronounced.

Can we take back the Civil War now and let them secede?

The US would be a very different country without 10 southern states. Fla. can stay.

The media takes a minority of loons in the south seriously because the south is a swing area. The GOP got and stayed in office using the 'southern strategy' which played on the fear and resentment of southern whites, for who things haven't been going well since ... a few years before the Civil War, to stay in power.

Of course the only reason the south is important is that the GOP has done everything possible to make politics in general, and government is specific look, lame, ineffectual and a complete waste of time. In a word, to do anything possible to keep people from voting. They do this because they feel they have the ace up their sleeve in the form of bug business and deep pockets. Both of which got their money and keep their money because government is weak.

With voter turnout in the 20% range the highly motivated and easily manipulated 5% that the southern loons represent become a decisive force.

These credulous folks have made advanced cognitive dissonance and magic thinking a cornerstone of their self image. This started before the Civil War, when the southerners 'couldn't imagine why the Negros, who had always been well treated, and who always seemed so happy, would want to change things'. After the Civil War the mythology of the South fighting for 'individual and states rights' the fighting south, which would have won but for 'being stabbed in the back' were floated and polished to a high sheen.

Of course, once you get used to swallowing all those lies the southern culture got the knack of using any offered conspiracy theory to take the edge off any uncomfortable facts. If global warming suggests that we are to blame for a coming calamity and that avoiding the calamity means your going to change your lifestyle and move outside you comfort zone then ... it is easier to just ignore climate change and claim that it is all a hoax.

If having a black man, a man slightly more liberal than the brown shirts you hang with, as president makes you uncomfortable it is easy to simply not accept his presidency. To buy into a conspiracy theory that a magical alternate reality where the majority of the American people are dupes, shills or conspirators and those that buy into this magical reality are truth seekers, patriots and protectors of the constitution.

Magical thinking and the ability to avoid dealing with unpleasant parts of reality by simply ignoring them have long been a fixture in the southern mindset.

Art - you obviously know almost nothing about either side in the Civil War and even less about the South today.

I've often thought the same thing, New England Bob. But I have some family and friends that live down there, and I would hate to see them left behind in such a strange land.

Donna B. - "Art - you obviously know almost nothing about either side in the Civil War and even less about the South today."

Spoken like a southerner from the old school. An opinion contradicts your view and the person is discounted and ignored instead of being engaged. LOL. You prove my point for me.

I have lived most of my life in the south and have generations in the south before me. The Florida clan still talks about "niggers and dogs" even as they are only half a step above the people they look down on. The Virginian clan still like to pretend they are from an old and noble line, related to the Lees don't you know, and above anything but ignoring any, what they term, ugliness.

Granted this view is most pronounced in the adults over fifty and you can find that some of their children, and many of their grandchildren, are less afflicted with this mindset. But you needn't look hard to find clusters of twenty and thirty year olds that have drunk the Koolaide and maintains a belief that they are from a noble old families that lost everything in the battle to protect states rights. Disguised as an interest in 'history'.

Kids who are sure Jews and blacks are destroying America. Most of who, listen to Limbaugh religiously, get all their news from FOX, and drink in the birther BS.

Yes, there has been change in the south over the last eighty years. But that's not the point. The point is that there is a virulent subset within the south, a subset well represented in my family and acquaintances down here, that deny that change.

Buy hey, I don't know a thing about it. I laugh, but would laugh harder if it wasn't tragic.

I'm sorry it's just that virulent subset you've met. Perhaps you'd like to meet my family some day?

I was born and raised in Colorado, but have lived in the South for nearly 40 years. Yes, I'm old... enough to know there is no monolithic "South", just as there is no monolithic "North" and there never has been.

Go read a history book.

Can we take back the Civil War now and let them secede?

The US would be a very different country without 10 southern states. Fla. can stay"

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Actually I'll take you up on that offer. We'll keep the southern states and the other states can continue to push socialism. We'll be free. We'll elect a real president and have our freedoms back. You can certainly keep California to yourself and all it illigitiamte budget woes (self-inflicted by liberals).

Fine, We'll keep florida, but here's the trade off. The southern states can secede and be a free nation, but all of the illegal aliens have to go. We can then militarize the border and put up a 50 foot tall concrete wall with machine gunners every 1/4 mile of the border wall. If people wish to come here, they have to do it legally from now on.

I am sad that the South lost the civil war. It would have been great if the South would have won. You can keep Obama and the change, we'll elect a conservative president who makes real changes.

Done deal?

Confederate Conservative -- you are just as deluded as Art. You should read a history book also.

The defining political stance of the South is actually populist, which is neither conservative or liberal.

thanks for article very