Tagged: birthers

Posted: April 19, 2012 at 10:02 pm

Schweitzer Jumps into Presidential Race

The Governor of Montana had choice words for Mitt Romney today, saying that while he will probably win Montana, he will suffer in states where Latino votes are required for victory.

Schweitzer also made a somewhat unusual point: that Romney, who has degraded and insulted hispanics during his Republican primary, will be unable to discuss his personal Mexican heritage as a way of making himself more palatable to Latino voters.

Romney’s grandfather lived in Mexico in a Mormon colony, and Romney’s father was born there. That’s right: by some interpretations (including the 14th amendment theories espoused by most Republican Montana state legislators), Mitt Romney is the son of a Mexican.

Schweitzer, in the Huffington Post article, says he believes that Romney will shy away from discussing this interesting connection to Mexico. Why? The Mormon colony that Romney’s father was born into was a Polygamy colony. Indeed, Romney has four grandfathers, but dozens of grandmothers.

We will see if Schweitzer is right. Given his personality, it’s no stretch to envision Romney trying to convince voters that he is both a Mexican and an anti-immigrant American.

Posted: February 12, 2011 at 10:51 am

Today’s Must Read Post on the Montana Legislature

…is actually a hilarious column in the Billing Outpost. Outpost Editor David Crisp discusses his emails from birther-bill sponsor Rep. Bob Wagner, the hypocrisy of Will Deschamps, and “domestic enimies” in the must-read piece “Wacky season arrives early in state Legislature .”

Posted: February 3, 2011 at 8:31 pm

Where is the Discussion of Montana’s Birther Bill?

I know I’m not the only one that is astounded at the lack of media coverage of the crazy behavior of some of Montana’s Republicans.

For example, where is all the coverage on the birther bill heard recently in the Montana legislature?

Thankfully, the Flathead Memo has a great analysis. UPDATE: So does CNN. Montana newspapers got scooped.

Posted: January 26, 2011 at 10:55 pm

Nutwatch: An Analysis

Montana’s TEA Partiers seem obsessed with making Montana into the mecca for right-wing nutters.

The legislature is no exception. The same day that the state TEA Party Republicans pushed a radical Arizona-style immigration law, they embraced the “birther” conspiracy about President Barack Obama. The Flathead Beacon reported today that state House TEA Party Republican Bob Wagner (R-Harrison) has introduced a birther bill would require Obama and any future federal candidate to show her birth certificate to order to be included on the ballot in the presidential election.

But the birther bill could potentially backfire against the Montana GOP if the public comes to believe that such nutty extremism drives their whole agenda. While the TEA Party wing of the MT GOP has yet to explicitly link its birther bill with the anti-immigration, black helicopter, anti-UN, anti-victims of domestic violence, anti-Indian, anti-vaccine and other conspiracy theory based legislation, it seems clear that all of these initiatives spring from the same desire to play to the right-wing base. The same GOP lawmakers are behind most of the proposals, after all.

By the way, isn’t the fact that Obama’s “illegal” human (as the Helena IR would write) status old news by now? How is Rep. Wagner just now getting around to pandering to the crazies about this? He just likes the Constitution you say? Sure, he loves it. He loves it so much he chopped it up into pieces, put it in the blender, and freebased it with a little baking soda.

But these bills won’t improve the lives the state’s crackpot conspiracy theorists and TEA party ralliers-nor will they create higher paying jobs or attract innovative businesses to Montana. They will simply humiliate the legislators who’ve endorsed the measures by making them (and our state) the laughingstocks of the nation-a task they set out upon achieving even before they were elected. The birther bill–and the other black helicopter, Area 51-level conspiracy, racist, sexist and fundi bills–are all forms of reactionary hysteria, but much of this legislation could actually cause profound substantive harm to Montana residents.

The more these ideas are linked, the better.