It May Have Looked Like A Destroyer, But It Was Really A Cruz Ship
The Free Republic Birthers got a wake up call yesterday from Jim Robinson, the crusty owner of the website. On a thread about the individual who made a Birther out of himself at a Mark Levin book signing, Judge Robinson settled the Ted Cruz eligibility question for the Freepers:
Jim Robinson at Comment 43: Ted Cruz was born to an American mother. He’s a natural born citizen and patriot in every sense of the word and I will support him to the hilt if he decides to run and is the strongest conservative running!! In fact, if that happens, FR will be Cruz Country!!
Go, TED, GO!!
FU Tokyo Rove, Chris Cristy, Jeb Bush, McCain, McBoehner, McGrahammesty, McFlake, McConnell and ALL GOP-e RINOS!!
The tea party rebellion is on!!
Anyone can’t live with that (as the say in Russia) tough shitski!!
and, when hit with the typical Birther ” But we’re just constitutionalists!” claims:
Jim Robinson at Comment 89: I’m upholding my oath. Cruz is a natural born citizen despite any claims to the contrary from the legions of internet “sea lawyers!”
and again, when asked, “Do you intend to ban those Conservatives that disagree with you on this matter”
Jim Robinson at Comment 91: Depends on the degree of nastiness. Don’t get nasty against our freepers or our conservative candidates.
and, when pushed some more:
Jim Robinson at 126: I said if Cruz is the strongest conservative running. But neither Cruz or Palin have declared. We’ll have to wait and see. And as far as I’m concerned, I’ll go with Levin and others who say Cruz is a natural born citizen.
Robinson had more to say, but I just wanted to provide enough to get across the gist of what happened. Here is a link to the thread.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3059395/posts
I was once a Freeper, but when I jumped on the two citizen parents Birthers there, I got the ZOT! There is a link in Note 1 below to the article I wrote in response, which has some undercover photos of the Freeper Birthers in full whine mode. Jim Robinson has several problems on his hands, and not easy ones to solve. He has flatly decreed, and correctly, that Ted Cruz is eligible. Yet, he has not come right out and told the Birthers to knock off all the “two citizen parents” stuff.
By the very nature of things, it is not the “birth certificate” Birthers who have a problem with Cruz, unless they are also “two citizen parents” type Birthers. And frankly, the two citizen parents Birthers are beyond reasoning with. They have repeatedly lost in court, and are not fazed. Their argument is nonsensical to begin with. What person with a functioning brain really believes that Emer de Vattel is the source of American citizenship law??? Yet, they persist in the silliness.
What reasonably intelligent person can’t read the Wong Kim Ark (WKA) case a half dozen times and get the point, that the 14th Amendment put natural born citizenship for those born inside the country into the Constitution, where it would be safe from both either state and Congressional tinkering? It make take several readings, but goodness, two of the seven sections are dedicated to natural born subjects and natural born citizens. Another section is dedicated to showing how the 14th Amendment affirms and incorporates that previous law into itself. And still, the two citizen parents birthers are out there trying to defeat an 1898 SCOTUS holding with a 1758 legal treatise by a Swiss guy. Or some legal dictionary they found at a garage sale. Or, some case prior to 1898, which even if they were reading it correctly, would be reversed by WKA.
To paraphrase John Donne, from his Love’s Alchemy poem, “Hope not for mind [reason] in Birthers!” And to make it worse, it is not as if the Obots and Anti-Birthers aren’t doing their best to educate the poor addled two citizen parents birthers. We write words enough to stretch to Pluto and back, and they still ignore us. Jim Robinson is delusional if he thinks anything short of banning them or completely censoring them for preaching their nonsense is going to stop them.
That is where his second problem comes in. Because the longer they preach the “two citizen parents” nonsense, the more it sinks into the minds of low information voters. It will not matter to many of them that the nonsense is being presented against Obama, and not against conservative candidates. They will repeat the nonsense as if they know what they are talking about, and then refuse to vote for people like Bobby Jindal, Marc Rubio, or Ted Cruz. If he cares about his conservative causes, Robinson must tell them to knock off all the two citizen parents nonsense period, or get banned. He has already let this nonsense go on for too long, and the longer it goes on, the worse it gets for Cruz and others.
Finally, he has the problem of how to go about banning or zotting them with a straight face. He had no problem setting forth restrictions on rampant paranoia like Alex Jones’ Prison Planet, and overtly sovereign citizen theories. He didn’t let that stuff ever take hold at his website. It is different with the Birthers because he shares responsibility for letting them get to this point. At Free Republic they formed a clique and went around screaming Troll! and Obot! at people who disagreed with them. Some of us got zotted. Free Republic became Birther friendly territory.
And fertile ground it was. Some of the dumbest Birthers I ever met took root and grew at Free Republic, including but not limited to: Edge919, DiogenesLamp, and Butterdezillion. Robinson should have put his foot down a long time ago, the same as he would have if a group was telling Freepers they didn’t have to pay income taxes. But he didn’t, and now the place is full of them.
In summary, half measures won’t work, the Birthers continue to do damage to the conservative cause, and they are in large enough numbers that it will hurt the website to ZOT! them all. The best alternative I can see is for him to resort to outright censorship. He needs to flatly state that the two citizen parent stuff is complete bullsh*t, and anybody who preaches it, and misleads other conservatives, even if it is in relation to Obama, is going to get the ZOT!.
It should be interesting to watch.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Note 1. Squeeky’s Free Republic ZOT!: Like I said above, there are photographs of the Birthers!
The Birther Think Tank 