Loyalty Oaths And Nonsense

Florida GOP Rep. Bill Posey has decided to go for broke on the Obama "fake birth certificate" baloney, introducing a bill that would require all Presidential candidates to submit a certified copy of one to be eligible to run.

CNN reports that Posey has submitted a bill to require all presidential candidates to submit a birth certificate -- which Posey says is needed in order to remove this issue as a reason to question any president's legitimacy.

"Opponents of President Bush used the 2000 election results and the court decisions to question the legitimacy of President Bush to serve as President," Posey said in a statement. "Opponents of President Obama are raising the birth certificate issue as a means of questioning his eligibility to serve as president. Neither of these situations are healthy for our Republic."

Posey's spokesperson told CNN that Posey takes President Obama's word for it that he's a citizen: "This was not meant as an insult to the president. It is simply meant as a way to clarify future election laws and to dispel the issue so we can move on with doing business for the country."

Sure it's not a direct insult to President Obama who of course would be required under this law to submit one as the Presidential candidate for the Dems in 2012. It's not racist in the least, this being required after 43 other white Presidents.

Jon Singer at MyDD correctly calls this as a major opening for the Democrats in Posey's district.

The introduction of this ridiculous and frankly shameful piece of legislation should put Bill Posey squarely in the sights of House Democrats for 2010. The district Posey represents, Florida's 15th, is only marginally Republican, with a historical R+4 PVI rating. In 2008, John McCain carried the district -- though only by a narrow 51 percent to 48 percent margin. That fall, Posey received just 53 percent of the vote in what was his first successful congressional run, despite the fact that he outspent his relatively unknown Democratic challenger by close to a 9-to-1 margin.

Clearly, Posey is not entrenched, and his district isn't overwhelmingly Republican. So the fact that he is allying himself with a fringe that reporters are comparing to the conspiracy theorists who believed that Bill Clinton was involved in Vince Foster's death or that George W. Bush was in some way involved in 9/11 makes him highly vulnerable and ripe for a challenge in 2010.

Dems should make every effort to take Posey down on principle now. No doubt the GOP will want to reward him for this "birther" idiocy.