VIDEO: Romney Actually Goes There With Birther Joke
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Romney, VideoProbably the saddest appeal to the base yet. Can’t believe he went there.
“I love being home, in this place where Ann and I were raised, where but the both of us were born,” Romney said after introducing his wife, fellow Michigan native Ann. “No one’s ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place where we were born and raised.”
Yep. How funny. Because…wink, wink…you don’t REALLY know where Obama was born.
Pathetic.
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August 27th, 2012 at 2:36 pm
Dog whistle, on three frequencies. Most people heard it as the lame joke it was. Liberals heard it as a Birther slam against Obama. And the subconscious angle (call it the harmonic…) is that many heard the subtext that Romney was raised here under American values, and not overseas in a radical-left milieu. Which was likely the intended message.
As James Taranto pointed out, if you can hear the whistle, you’re the dog.
August 27th, 2012 at 2:49 pm
I LOVE this analogy.
Almost invariably find Taranto to be a prick.
For me, “subtext” is another flag word, like reactionary. LOL.
August 27th, 2012 at 4:58 pm
But the point is…this isn’t a joke. Or have I missed all of those hilarious birth certificate jokes that have been keeping us in stitches over the past few decades?
August 27th, 2012 at 8:03 pm
Ah, made your ears perk up, did it? :)
The audience got it. They know Obama was born on US soil AND they don’t think he really understands America because he was raised overseas and in a posh boarding school in Hawaii and has never really worked for a living.
August 28th, 2012 at 7:04 pm
Tully, they know very well that high profile Repubs like Trump are still going after the birth certificate thing. They also know that a fair amount of the base believes Obama wasn’t born in the US. The dog whistle was meant for those folks…not the inbetweeners who don’t believe in the conspiracy theories. It leaves the door open for all of those nuts to think that Romney really believes that Obama isn’t from here. Don’t spin it around on me as if I’m inventing this reasoning because I’m forcing a square peg into a round hole.
I find it consistently bewildering that when somebody does something fairly deliberate, and I talk about it, you find some other reason that isn’t contained within the messaging and decide to point out THAT instead of what is right in front of your face.
August 28th, 2012 at 7:11 pm
And if you don’t want to take my word for it…how about Chris Christie?
August 30th, 2012 at 4:11 pm
For me, the punchline is your reaction. Romney knows that Obama has done more than enough to show he was born in Hawaii. And he knows that some of his supporters are zealous kooks who won’t accept that, while most of his supporters also know the birther thing is a farce.
AND along with this latter group of followers, Romney knows that liberals go apesh!t every time a conservative says anything less than “I am sure Barack Obama was born in Hawaii and all my supporters who believe otherwise are whackjobs.”
The laughs are because he “went there.” He was teasing YOU. And you wnet right for the bait. Romney was briefly playing to the cheap seats, as well as baiting partisans from the other side.
If you want to get your panties all twisted about that, you’re entitled to your mileage. Just as everyone else is entitled to theirs. Doesn’t us make apologists. It just makes us more tolerant of politicians’ occasional attempts to play to the cheap seats and let the other side’s partisans get bent out of shape about it.