David Corn: 'Arizona may be where this Birther Ball gets rolling'

They don't come much more liberal than David Corn of Mother Jones. In his latest missive, he expresses concern that Arizona is likely to pass a state law that will prevent Obama from appearing on the 2012 ballot without producing his long form birth certificate. He appears to want to diminish the significance of one state with ten electoral votes that Obama lost in 2008 anyway but then has to concede that this could become bigger than he'd like to see it.

Via Mother Jones:

The birthers have a plan to end Barack Obama's presidency—and in Arizona, they're making progress.

Last week, Arizona state Rep. Judy Burges, a Republican, introduced a bill that would bar presidential candidates who do not prove they were born in the United States from appearing on the ballot in the Grand Canyon state. And state Rep. Chad Campbell, the top Democrat in the GOP-controlled Arizona House of Representatives, tells Mother Jones that the bill is likely to pass. It was introduced with 25 co-sponsors in the House and 16 co-sponsors in the state Senate; the measure needs 31 votes in the House and 16 in the Senate for approval. "Will it matter?" asks Campbell. "We've started a tradition here of passing legislation that is political grandstanding or that sets up litigation."

But the birthers—those ardent Obama foes who believe the president was not born in Hawaii and, thus, is not constitutionally qualified serve as president—see this measure as more than symbolic. For them, it's part of a well-orchestrated campaign to deny Obama reelection.

It's not that Obama necessarily requires Arizona's 10 electoral votes to win reelection in 2012. In 2008, he lost there to John McCain, Arizona's senior senator (though in 2012, Obama could make a play for the state). More important, Burges' bill—which would establish a strict standard for proving natural-born citizenship (which the birthers presume Obama could not meet)—is a model for other states, and similar efforts are under way in Pennsylvania, Missouri, Montana, Georgia, and Texas. (Obama won Pennsylvania in 2008 and lost Missouri by less than 4,000 votes.) Arizona may be where this birther ball gets rolling.

I have long dismissed the Birthers as being more interested in going down blind alleys than in pursuing more important stories found on other avenues but in this case, they may be winning the debate, especially in light of the recent antics of Hawaii's socialist governor. Back in December, Corn himself said, while appearing on MSNBC's Hardball, that Obama should go ahead and release the long form to end the conspiracy theories. While he did so mockingly, he nonetheless conceded that he wanted socialist governor Neil Abercrombie - who went on an indignant quest to prove Obama's citizenship and shut the birthers up - to end the conspiratorial controversy once and for all.

Small problem for Corn that he doesn't address in his article. Abercrombie struck out.

Said Corn of Abercrombie last month on Hardball: 'There's nothing he's going to do that's going to change any mind of anybody out there who already believes this.' Lost on Corn is the fact that Abercrombie didn't do anything; he produced NOTHING. Here's the increasingly infamous segment from Hardball where three hard core liberals - Corn, Matthews, and Clarence Page - advocated that Obama produce the long form.

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