Political Irony

The ironic thing about all this birther nonsense is that it applies just as much to Romney as it does to Obama (which is to say, it really doesn’t apply to either of them).

People argue that Obama’s father was born in Kenya. But Mitt Romney’s father, George Romney, was born in Mexico.

So what.

Even more ironic, George Romney ran for president during the 1968 election. At the time, some people questioned whether Romney was qualified to be president, because the constitution requires that the president has to be a “natural born citizen”. Mitt Romney’s father argued:

I am a natural born citizen. My parents were American citizens. I was a citizen at birth.

Indeed, the Congressional Research Service (the arm of the Library of Congress that does research for Congress) researched the issue and declared that “natural born citizen” would “most likely include” not only anyone born on US soil, but also anyone born elsewhere of at least one parent who was a US citizen. Under that definition, even if Obama was born in Kenya, he would still be qualified to be president because his mother was a US citizen.

As for George Romney, he lost the primary to Richard Nixon, so the question was never tested.

The same issue came up with John McCain, who was born in Panama (his parents were stationed in the canal zone with the military).

Of course, these are just facts (stubborn things, those). I think the real purpose of the birther noise is to promote the mistrustful feeling of “other” about Obama (i.e., he can’t be president because he doesn’t look like me and has a funny name). Yes, I’m playing the racism card. But I’m just calling a spade a spade (oops).