Written by John Tullock   

Mitt Romney’s “joke” to supporters in Michigan the other day provides a good example of how the once-moderate candidate ever more shamelessly panders to the extreme right wing of his party.

Oh sure, no one has ever asked Governor Romney for his birth certificate in the jackboot, “Papers, please!” sense of, say, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer. Nevertheless, we are all commanded to produce a birth certificate on various occasions, when applying for a passport, for example. Ergo, Mr. Romney has been asked for his birth certificate, as has damn near everyone else, multiple times.

Of course, Mr. Romney had no intention for his words to be taken literally. His purpose was to interject one of the nastiest aspects of right-wing extremism into the campaign, the absurd notion that President Obama is not an American citizen. What exactly would the State of Hawaii have to do, one wonders, to convince the birthers to shut up? You can buy coffee mugs, among other things, bearing a picture of this supposedly elusive document. If only the American people had as many opportunities to examine Mitt Romney’s taxes as they have to look over the President’s birth certificate.

The real purpose of the governor’s lame “joke” was to send a signal to his party’s most extreme wing, the gun-toting, gay-bashing, Bible-thumping, white supremacist crowd, surely the only people remaining (aside from Donald Trump) who actually take the birther nonsense seriously. Right? Not necessarily. Mr. Romney’s audience last Friday did not react as though they’d heard a joke. Rather than laughter, there were cheers and applause. This shameful episode only provides more evidence that, for too many in the GOP, their biggest problem with Obama is not about the certificate he left the hospital with, it is about the skin he arrived at the hospital in.