The Politico informs us that the birthers are giving the GOP "headaches." Like I said last week, I don't see why fringe crazies like should worry too much about fringe crazies making them look like fringe crazies, and what isn't crazy about the GOP nowadays?
As evidence of this observation I cited the fact that James Inhofe is one of the party's Point Men on the subject of Science, on which subject he is an absolute barking maniac, and this doesn't seem to embarrass anybody in the party, even though it's pretty bizarre. So I was pleased to discover today that Inhofe's remark to The Politico that the birthers "have a point" caused him at least a minor headache, such that he felt compelled to clarify that he is sufficiently broadminded to concede that Barack Obama is indeed legitimately the president of the United States of America. Mighty white of him.
But that hardly means that Inhofe is not a crazy conspiracy theorist -- he is! It's just that when it comes to this particular crazy conspiracy theory he can be backed into a corner and forced to admit the theory is, ultimately, hooey, the sort of thing that it does not befit a member of the World's Most Awesomest Deliberative Body to go bandying about in public. After all, as Steve Benen says, "There should be a clear and distinct line between fringe lunatics and the beliefs of U.S. senators."
As indeed there should!
But, with all due respect to Steve, as is perfectly clear in the case of Inhofe, there simply isn't any such line. It's just that on this one particular issue of Obama's birth, with a good deal of pounding, it eventually proved possible to drive a wedge between one specific GOP senator and the wacky GOP base by making him concede the existence of empirical reality.
And this is probably only possible because the birthers are by and large Washington outsiders who don't have the kind of money and influence available to those most heavily invested in denying global climate change.
The only reason the birthers might cause serious problems for the GOP is that the birthers are such obvious rubes. Apart from that, though, what will probably end up happening is that the GOP bigwigs will keep up with the doubletalk until a more exciting and ever so slightly more plausible nutty conspiracy theory comes along that the whole moron gang can cheerfully get behind and bray about endlessly, all family troubles in the past buried and forgotten.
(Incidentally I also enjoyed that the other GOP elected official the Politico talked to was Pete Hoekstra, who really should know from fringe conspiracy theories.)