Romney and Republicans resurrect birtherism

Mitt Romney clinched the Republican nomination with his win in the Texas primary this week. It would have been bigger news, but Mitt’s new best friend Donald Trump sucked up all the oxygen in the daily news cycle with an on-air spat with Wolf Blitzer where Wolf challenged Trump’s ongoing fixation with President Obama’s birth certificate. (Frankly, they both sounded ridiculous.)

But it didn’t end there. Though Romney claims he doesn’t agree with Trump’s birtherism, but nonetheless embraces the man’s support because, hey, he has to get to 50.1% somehow, shortly after the Blitzer/Trump mix-up, Romney released his own birth certificate to the media. Not that I heard any great public clamor for it. Personally, think a few more back years of his tax returns would be more enlightening.

But this bizarre fixation doesn’t end there. Enter, Michigan’s own Pete Hoekstra calling for a new federal office of birth certificate checking:

“I’d like to establish a three-person office in Washington, D.C., OK, knowing it will grow to five,” Hoekstra told a tea party rally early this month in Lapeer.

The panel should comprise “an FBI person, maybe a CIA person and one person managing those two people, and just if you want to run for president, you’ve got to go with the right, proper documentation and go to that person and get it certified that you meet the qualifications to be president of the United States.”

And here I thought Republicans were supposed to be all about downsizing government, not creating new agencies of dubious worth. But interesting that Pete wants the CIA sitting in on this one. Maybe that explains the botched rollout of Romney’s mobile app. Perhaps they didn’t mistakenly misspell America. Maybe there’s secret plan to put the CIA in charge of government functions and Mitt’s AmerCIA is going to be the new name of our country if Romney manages to bamboozle the voters into putting him into the Oval Office. With our present day Republicans, anything seems possible.