This is pretty staggering.
I mean - I was aware of the few recent polls that revealed that surprising percentages of the right wing believe that President Obama wasn't born in the United States - but this new poll suggests that nearly half of Republicans now believe this.
While I'm not exactly shocked, considering that the Republican Tea Party has literally been rapidly climbing crazy mountain in their clown car for the last year and a half - this number, in my opinion, should be turned into a national ad - or...at least be employed to further illustrate how the GOP is currently standing at the edge of where reality ends and becomes - well, madness.
Now to CNN's credit, they have been consistently adamant in their debunking of this science fiction story from the right (probably one of the few examples of CNN actually debunking a right wing myth in the last two years), and in the article detailing the poll's results, that hasn't changed - they state right up front that it's nonsense, going so far as to show the certificate of live birth and the Hawaii birth announcement:
Now, I have my own skepticism about why they would even continue to poll something like this, as the simple act of doing so legitimizes it (and perpetuates the idea) to an uncomfortable extent, but as that's up for debate to a degree, I'll just show the results of the poll.
First, the all-important phrasing of the question from CNN:
Do you think Barack Obama was definitely born in the United States, probably born in the United States, probably born in another country, or definitely born in another country?
Okay, so that's how they asked the question. Of course, I would have phrased it a bit differently:
"Do you think Barack Obama was definitely born in the United States, or are you so full of pathological fear and irrational hatred of a black Democratic President of the United States that you're a) probably incapable of existing in reality with the rest of us, or b) definitely incapable of existing in reality with the rest of us?"
Here's the response, from 1,018 adult Americans (to, um, the first question):
Okay, here's how tEh CRAzY breaks down:
The cross-tabs by party show that 41% of Republicans said Obama was "probably" or "definitely" not born in the United States.
Here's where I would normally clarify that these are Republicans and not the "tea party", but as 79% of the "tea party" self-identify as Republicans, as most of us here know, they've always been the same thing.
What's probably even more shocking than the size of the Republican response is that 29% of independents who took part in the poll share the view. That's just shy of a third of independents.
Just to add an important caveat to that, I have a feeling that there are most likely a lot of conservative Republicans in the poll, and in the country itself right now, who are referring to themselves as independents - but regardless, this is still a shockingly high number of "independents" admitting they're still buying into this story.
A quote from Keating Holland, CNN's polling director, who mentions that while 41% of Republicans is a big percentage, the majority of them are still clinging to sanity:
"Not surprisingly, there are big partisan differences, although a majority of Republicans thinks Obama was definitely or probably born here," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "Eighty-five percent of Democrats say that Obama was definitely or probably born in the U.S., compared to 68 percent of independents and 57 percent of Republicans. Twenty-seven percent of Republicans say he was probably not born here, and another 14 percent of Republicans say he was definitely not born in the U.S."
Now - while it's encouraging news that a majority of each party aren't birthers - take a look at that DEMOCRAT number:
85%.
That's 15% of Democrats who are, at least in this poll, saying they don't believe the president was born in the United States. If we're to discount likely mischief in a lot of these respondents, let's say that number lowers to 5%. Even if 5% of Democrats have fallen for it...well...let's just say that it makes me want to start smoking again.
Oh, I almost forgot: Happy Birthday, Mr. President - from all of us who are still living in this dimension.