Stories like this ought to give pause to those who make the argument that the Republican Party has finally regained its mojo and is back on track to attaining majority status:
Et tu, Rob Portman? Ye of sensibility and rectitude? Ye of maturity and political resolve? Despite inquires from Cincinnati Enquirer and Plain Dealer, Portman's campaign won't directly answer the question of whether the candidate believes that President Obama is a citizen. (Obma is.) So now, we're up to five Republican Senate candidates -- major ones, not including J.D. Hayworth in Arizona for the moment -- who have flirted with Birtherism.
Several of these candidates have later corrected their initial hesitation, but it precisely that initial hesitation that contains so much information about what Republican candidates fear right now.
In the (slightly less than) fourteen months of the Obama Presidency, there's no question that Republicans have improved their national standing to some extent. But it's important to remember that they've gained ground amidst the worst job market in more than fifty years, and they've done so while engaging nonstop in political warfare against a majority party that has been more preoccupied with the actual (and messy) process of governing than it has in playing politics.
Still, Republicans -- despite having the political advantage of a terrible economy and having been mostly ignored by their opponents -- have at best begun to approach parity in public opinion polls.
Now that we're getting closer to the election, no longer will Republican attacks go unanswered. Democrats are going to start firing back at Republicans with increasing regularity. There will be less intraparty fighting. The economy will continue its path of recovery. And in all likelihood the signature accomplishment of health care reform will have been achieved.
And so as we head into the beginning stages of the 2010 midterm elections, you have a Democratic Party that will start to unify after having successfully implemented major reforms. More importantly, you have a Democratic Party base that will see that the party was in fact able to deliver on important pieces of its agenda, giving them confidence that the long list of things to be done can be achieved.
Meanwhile, you have a completely ineffective Republican Party that has no new ideas, and is almost entirely animated by its hatred of President Obama -- hatred that is so extreme that its own U.S. Senate candidates can't even repudiate the wildly insane notion that President Obama is not in fact a natural born American citizen.
The notion that this GOP is anywhere near regaining majority status is almost as crazy as the birthers who are bringing it down.
© Jed Lewison