Mega Boehner leadership fail on birthers

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2011/02/weasel_words_from_speaker_boeh.html

Weasel words from Speaker Boehner
By Jonathan Capehart


I interrupt my swoon over House Speaker John Boehner's statesman-like mien of late to rap his knuckles over his answers about President Obama's faith and citizenship on "Meet the Press" Sunday. When it comes to Obama's citizenship, Boehner was consistent with what he told NBC last month: "The state of Hawaii has said that he was born there. That's good enough for me."

Well, what's not good enough for me were his next two sentences:

Video at link~

"The president says he's a Christian," Boehner said. "I accept him at his word."

The obvious implication is that there's a possibility the president might be lying. This is offensive and an insult.

NBC's David Gregory opened this line of questioning after showing a disturbing clip of a focus group Republican pollster Frank Luntz conducted in Iowa last week. When a woman said that she thought the president's religious beliefs "govern his foreign policy," Luntz asked her what she thought Obama's religious beliefs were. "I believe that he is a Muslim," she said. Then Luntz asked how many shared that opinion. "Wow!" Luntz exclaimed as more than a few hands were thrust skyward.

Gregory asked Boehner the only reasonable question to such lunacy: "As the speaker of the House, as the leader, do you not think it's your responsibility to stand up to that kind of ignorance?" But the speaker begged to differ. "It's not my job to tell the American people what to think."

Right -- but in the face of a persistent lie that has ensnared way too many in his party, it is incumbent upon those who know better to tell the uneducated or the mistaken what the truth is. In the parlance of Twitter, Boehner's resistance to do so was a #leadershipfail.

but it isn't really his desire either IMHO. If people believing that President Obama is a muslim and/or that he wasn't born here in the US helps the GOP electorally, why would he have any motivation to challenge them? BTW I'm not endorsing his refusal to correct the lies spouted by Fox News (which would take a century, possibly longer) but just observing that as long as it serves them electorally, he, like Cantor, is more than content to encourage the continuation of all of the lies spewed by Fox News and hate radio. Heck, he and the rest of his goons lie every single day about President Obama themselves and don't seem to feel any apparent remorse about it either. :shrug:

He's not supposed to be an expert on the president's birth, and he shouldn't express an opinion unless he has done the research.

On this one issue, Boehner is right.