I don't mean to step on Ashby's toes on this, but I was actually shocked by Romney's birth certificate crack -- and the Republicans rarely shock me any more.
"No one's ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place that we were born and raised."
What's astonishing is that this might be the first time a Republican has made the direct connection between physical appearance -- race -- and the birth certificate Birther nonsense. As Ashby wrote, I'm white and so no one thinks I'm a foreigner. And, naturally, the white crowd went crazy with enthusiasm, as did Rush Limbaugh.
Everybody knows that fringe right-wing conspiracy wackaloons have been demanding the president's birth certificate for four years solely because of his race. To reference the "birth certificate" buzzwords then to suggest that people know you were born and raised in Michigan, USA implies that we don't know where President Obama was born and raised. (Normal, sane, non-racist people know the president was born and raised in Hawaii.) In other words, President Obama isn't one of us -- he isn't part of the "we" who were "born and raised" in America.
This was no joke. It was calculated by the Romney campaign. And now, the Republican nominee for president has mainstreamed this conspiracy theory and greenlit its usage in normal political discourse. Racist, Southern Strategy tactics have officially been endorsed by Mitt Romney -- and he should be held accountable by the press and by rationally-thinking voters on both sides for this. This awfulness has no place in 2012 politics, unless, of course, our goal as a nation is to reward people who engage in racial division and mob hatred of non-whites.