Zandar's Thought Of The Day

To recap, the GOP presidential hopefuls have all been skirting the birther stupidity for the last year and all have been drifting around, nobody with a commanding lead.

Then Donald Trump takes a month to fully embrace birtherism and he takes a healthy lead in the polls.

Only 38% of Republican primary voters say they're willing to support a candidate for President next year who firmly rejects the birther theory and those folks want Mitt Romney to be their nominee for President next year. With the other 62% of Republicans- 23% of whom say they are only willing to vote for a birther and 39% of whom are not sure- Donald Trump is cleaning up. And as a result Trump's ridden the controversy about Barack Obama's place of birth to the highest level of support we've found for anyone in our national GOP polling so far in 2011.

Trump's broken the perpetual gridlock we've found at the top of the Republican field, getting 26% to 17% for Mike Huckabee, 15% for Romney, 11% for Newt Gingrich, 8% for Sarah Palin, 5% for Ron Paul, and 4% for Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty.

Among that 23% only willing to vote for a birther Trump is cleaning up even more, getting 37% to 13% for Huckabee and Palin, and 10% for Romney and Gingrich. He's a lot weaker with the 38% who say they're perfectly happy to vote for someone who's dismissed the birther theory- with them Romney leads at 23%, with Huckabee at 18%, Trump at 17%, Gingrich at 10%, and Palin at only 7%.

Better than anyone else, The Donald understands the GOP electorate's chief concern:  They hate the fact their country voted a black man into office, and they mean to correct that.  This is what they want, and more importantly they want to vote for someone who understands that millions of pissed off Republicans will never accept "one of them" in the White House.

So yes, Trump finally plants the birther flag and the support overwhelmingly follows.  The birthers now have their candidate.  And that should tell you everything you need to know about the Republican base in 2011.  Dismiss him at your own peril, for even if Trump never runs, if he successfully establishes birtherism as the mainstream position for the Republicans, he's done the damage.

Forget dog whistle references, it has becomes overt racism through a bullhorn now.  Welcome to the GOP primary.  May the worst person win.