PHOENIX — The Arizona Legislature gave final approval late Thursday night to a proposal that would require President Barack Obama and other presidential candidates to prove they are U.S. citizens before their names can appear on the state's ballot.
Arizona would become the first state to require such proof if Gov. Jan Brewer signs the measure into law.
Republican Rep. Carl Seel of Phoenix, the author of the bill, said the bill wasn't about opposition to Obama. "This bill is about the integrity of our elections," Seel said.
Thirteen other states have considered similar proposals this year. The proposals were defeated in Arkansas, Connecticut, Maine and Montana.
The bill won final approval from the state House in a 40-16 vote.
It's good to see that Arizona remains undeterred in its quest to continue its prominence as one of the dumbest states in our union.
Birtherism hit a frenetic peak shortly after Obama's election, but more or less declined as a prominent GOP talking point going into the 2010 midterms. Donald Trump has changed that. A simple Google search of his name now includes purported presidential ambitions and birther conspiracies among hits on real estate, bad hair, and his inane TV show. It's once again hitting the wingnut mainstream, or at least it will very shortly, as Trump is now leading GOP presidential candidate straw polls.
It's kind of annoying to be rehashing this debate, because these same points were more or less argued back when this non-issue first began it's decline. As John Cole astutely notes, the birther issue is all about race. The most prominent jackholes spewing this nonsense will never admit that, and will bristle at the accusation and screech that the race card is being played against them (This is just about the integrity of elections!) but it is absolutely about race. Two years ago, a black man with an African/Middle Eastern name and heritage was elected president on a Democratic ticket. That event, and that event alone, has precipitated the cries for Obama's birth certificate. You didn't see this under Clinton, you didn't see this under Carter, and you didn't see this under any of the other recent white male presidents on the Republican ticket. It is a cynical effort to cast Barack Obama as "other," as "not like us," as "strange" or "different," or as "un-American." You never saw anyone having Very Serious concerns about "integrity of elections" when a white male was on the presidential ticket.
And I know, I know - all of this makes me shrill, and I need to put it back in the deck, and there is nothing wrong with validating Very Serious and Principled concerns that a Marxist Socialist Fascist Kenyan Muslim Manchurian candidate usurper does not undermine the fragility of white America our democracy.
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