{"id":3921,"date":"2011-01-24T08:44:51","date_gmt":"2011-01-24T16:44:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=3921"},"modified":"2011-01-24T08:44:51","modified_gmt":"2011-01-24T16:44:51","slug":"cantor-quacks-on-birtherism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/01\/24\/cantor-quacks-on-birtherism\/","title":{"rendered":"Cantor Quacks on Birtherism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Few of the Republican arsenal of lies are more insane than spreading the belief that Obama is not a US citizen.&#160; Yesterday, Eric Cantor had an opportunity to exercise authentic leadership by calling for the many Republican politicians and pundits still spreading the lie to stop and debate real issues instead.&#160; To his credit, Cantor finally admitted that he thinks Obama is a US citizen and that the President wants what\u2019s best for the country.&#160; But on ending the insaniTEA, Cantor quacked.<\/font><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>This morning on NBC\u2019s Meet the Press, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) repeatedly refused host David Gregory\u2019s invitation to call questions about President Obama\u2019s citizenship illegitimate, and he also declined to call such rhetoric \u201ccrazy,\u201d saying \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s nice to call anyone crazy, ok?\u201d <strong>After several prompts from Gregory<\/strong>, Cantor eventually said he believes the president \u201cis a citizen of the United States\u201d&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;Watch it:<\/p>\n<p>&#160;<iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" title=\"YouTube video player\" height=\"510\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/A_f1io94aGs?rel=0\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"640\" type=\"text\/html\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"background-image: none; border-right-width: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; display: inline; float: left; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; padding-top: 0px\" title=\"24BIRTHER\" border=\"0\" alt=\"24BIRTHER\" align=\"left\" src=\"https:\/\/www.7thstep.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/24BIRTHER.jpg\" width=\"361\" height=\"480\" \/>Cantor\u2019s first attempt to deflect blame for birther conspiracies onto the media and \u201cothers in this country\u201d is a dishonest denial of the fact that birth certificate conspiracies have distinctly right-wing origins<\/strong>, as Gregory notes. The theories frequently bubble up at Tea Party rallies and on popular conservative websites like World Net Daily [Teabuggery delinked]. Fox News also <a href=\"http:\/\/mediamatters.org\/research\/200905280018\" target=\"_blank\">frequently traffics<\/a> in conspiracy theories about the president\u2019s birth certificate. <\/p>\n<p>In addition, there are several elected officials who have raised questions about Obama\u2019s real birthplace, including several Republicans in the House of Representatives that Cantor leads. For example, Rep. <strong>Tim Walberg (R-MI)<\/strong> has said \u201cI really don\u2019t know\u201d if Obama was born in the United States. Rep. <strong>Paul Broun (R-GA)<\/strong> has also said he doesn\u2019t know if the president is a citizen. In fact, a tally [Teabuggery delinked] kept at World Net Daily claims that the following members of Cantor\u2019s caucus doubt the president\u2019s citizenship: <strong>Reps. Bill Posey (R-FL), Dan Burton (R-IN), Ted Poe (R-TX), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), John Campbell (R-CA), John R. Carter (R-TX), John Culberson (R-TX), Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), Randy Neugebauer (R-TX), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), and Kenny Marchant (R-TX)<\/strong>\u2026 [<em>emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Inserted from &lt;<a href=\"http:\/\/thinkprogress.org\/2011\/01\/23\/cantor-birther-claims\/\" target=\"_blank\">Think Progress<\/a>&gt;<\/p>\n<p><font color=\"#0000ff\">Once again, the basic civility to call for honesty exceeds what the Republican leadership is willing to do.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Few of the Republican arsenal of lies are more insane than spreading the belief that Obama is not a US citizen.&#160; Yesterday, Eric Cantor had an opportunity to exercise authentic leadership by calling for the many Republican politicians and pundits still spreading the lie to stop and debate real issues instead.&#160; To his credit, Cantor <a href='https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/01\/24\/cantor-quacks-on-birtherism\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3921\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}