The Thirty Percent Solution

Yesterday I ran across the breakdown math that suggested that as little as 30% of Southern Republicans believe Obama is a U.S. citizen.

So what proportion of Southern whites doubt that Obama is an American citizen? While Ali did not release the racial breakdowns for the the South, and cautioned that the margin of error in the smaller sample of 720 people would be larger than the national margin of error (2 percent), the proportion of white Southern voters with doubts about their president’s citizenship may be higher than 70 percent. More than 30 percent of the people polled in the South were non-white, and very few of them told pollsters that they had questions about Obama’s citizenship. In order for white voters to drive the South’s “don’t know” number to 30 percent and it’s “born outside the United States” number to 23 percent, as many as three-quarters of Southern whites told pollsters that they didn’t know where Obama was born.

I thought to myself yesterday that was astonishingly high if true, but sure, I could believe that number.

Turns out Taegan Goddard is reporting that the 30% number is actually pretty damn accurate, at least in the state of Virginia.

Here's an advance look at a new Public Policy Polling survey in Virginia completed over the weekend: An astonishing 41% of the state's Republicans think President Obama was not born in the United States while just 32% think he was and 27% are still not sure.

So yeah, if Virginia is indicitive (and all indications are that is it is), you have anywhere from two-thirds to three quarters of Republicans in the South having at least some doubts about our President even being a U.S. citizen.

That's staggering. 41% of Virginia Republicans flat out think our President is an illegal alien, despite the evidence. That's actually more disturbing than the breakdown esitmates, where a plurality of Virginia Republicans believe he's not legitimately our President rather than a plurality being unsure.

The GOP has lost control of this beast, folks. It's gotten loose, and they're no longer able to tamp it down. It's now the defining issue for their core constituency. And it will continue to lumber across the landscape, destroying all in its path.

How much damage will this idiotic foolishness do before it is put down?