Quantcast
Channel: The Reid Report Blog » right wing extremists
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 5

Trump or no Trump, nearly half of all Republicans are birthers

0
0

The baby who would be president: Barack Obama in undated photo.

Donald Trump may be trying to wriggle out of his birther PJs — probably worrying that Lawrence O’Donnell (and Michael Issikoff’s) dissections of him may cost him renewal of his NBC show (or not…) his primary source of income. But birtherism isn’t going anywhere, not in the new, retrograde GOP.

A new poll sums it up: nearly half of Republicans are now birthers, and more than two-thirds are at least “birther-curious”:

A plurality of Republicans believes that President Obama was not born in the United States, according to a new poll released Thursday.

Forty-five percent of registered Republicans think Obama was born outside the U.S., 33 percent believe he was born in the U.S. and 22 percent don’t know, per the results of a CBS News/New York Times survey.

And while only 23 percent of Republicans in that poll felt that Trump is a serious presidential candidate, the birther issue has clearly taken hold in the Republican Party, meaning that any nominee will have to deal with it and with its adherents, who can no longer be called the fringe of the GOP.

And while some in the Beltway, notably Ben Smith of Politico, have dismissed recent polls showing just how many Republicans are birthers (Smith doesn’t think people “vote that way,”) don’t make the mistake of thinking the present outburst of birther madness has to do with Trump’s “genius.” Republicans have been birthers for a long time.

This was the finding of a Public Policy Poll way back in September 2009, when Obama had been in office for less than a year:

The poll also showed high levels of extremism among voters of both parties on some key issues. 42% of Republicans think Barack Obama was not born in the US while 25% of Democrats think George W. Bush had something to do with 9/11.

In other words, if birtherism is on the rise, it’s a very slight rise.

 

 


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 5

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images