Obama spokesman: That Romney birth certificate joke is “gutterball politics” 
 
 posted at 4:17 pm on August 24, 2012 by Allahpundit 
 
 In case you’re wondering what it takes to offend a campaign whose allies have accused Romney of tax evasion based on anonymous “sources” and blamed him for leaving a steelworker’s wife to die from cancer uninsured, here you go. Turns out Obama, whose major contribution to deficit reduction this past year was the fiscal joke known as the “Buffett Rule,” is running a serious, substantive campaign while Romney, who just took up the sword of entitlement reform by picking Paul Ryan, is all about smears and distractions. The things you learn on MSNBC. 
 
 Two points. One: I don’t get why Romney would step on his own message to make a birth certificate joke. He’s spent the past week neck-deep in culture-war quicksand thanks to Todd Akin and is looking at another week of it once the Democratic convention opens. He could have used today to talk about unemployment or his energy policy or whatever, but instead he chose to throw the press some chum with this. (One of his aides told BuzzFeed that the line wasn’t in Romney’s prepared remarks but was delivered off-the-cuff. I’ll bet.) The point, I guess, is to prove that he’s capable of being politically incorrect by tweaking the media on a subject that makes them hyperventilate like almost nothing else, but anyone who cares much about that was voting for him already. It’s hard enough for Romney to break through the media’s wall of nonsense to reach voters. Why hand them another brick? 
 
 Two: This is the perfect ending to a week marked by criticism from Jake Tapper and, more tepidly, Chuck Todd that the media isn’t doing its job. From the moment this sentence escaped Romney’s lips, it was a metaphysical certainty that it would dominate political coverage for the rest of the day, with MSNBC’s pants-wetting expected to last well into the evening. No one expected otherwise even though everyone understands that few votes, if any, will shift because of this. When I started reading blogs years ago, it was relatively rare for reporters to admit that the media is biased or prone to trivial treatment of momentous events; whenever a reporter or editor actually ‘fessed up — the example that sticks in my mind was Daniel Okrent acknowledging the patently obvious fact that the NYT is a liberal newspaper — it was big news, a moral victory for conservatives who demanded that the press own up to its prejudices. These days, my sense is that they’re more willing to own up (they have to be since there are so many more critics online cataloging them) but that they’ve started to use their candor almost as an excuse to be as trivial as they want. Sure, they’ll spend three days navel-gazing about Romney’s dumb joke, but as long as Todd or Bob Schieffer or some other big name TV journalist sighs afterward and admits that it’s silly to spend three days on this, well, then that’s proof that they have “integrity” after all. Three cheers for progress. 
 
 Two clips for you here, one of Obama’s flack checking the various talking-point boxes and the other, via the Examiner, of MSNBC being very MSNBC-ish. 
 
 Related Posts: ||||| Romney says "birther" joke wasn't a swipe at Obama 
 
 (CBS News) In an interview with CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley on Friday, Mitt Romney played down the remarks he made about President Obama's origins, arguing that they amounted to a joke and not a "swipe" at the president. 
 
 "No, no, not a swipe," Romney said. "I've said throughout the campaign and before, there's no question about where he was born. He was born in the U.S. This was fun about us, and coming home. And humor, you know -- we've got to have a little humor in a campaign." 
 
 Romney was on the campaign trail in his home state of Michigan Friday when he made a crack at the "birther" suspicions that ultimately drove Mr. Obama to release his long-form birth certificate to prove he was born in the United States. 
 
 "I love being home in this place where Ann and I were raised, where both of us were born. Ann was born in Henry Ford Hospital. I was born in Harper Hospital," Romney said in Commerce, Michigan earlier Friday. "No one's ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place that we were born and raised." 
 
 Romney told Pelley that taking the stage in Michigan Friday was an emotional moment for him and his wife Ann. 
 
 "You just felt, you know, you felt sort of everything that happened to us here - how we grew up, how we met here, the sacrifices that our families made - coming to Michigan, you know, it all sort of just washed over me as we got up on that stage," he said. "It was a very emotional feeling. It's a feeling of coming home." 
 
 While Romney's remarks may have amounted to an off-the-cuff joke, they elicited a swift and harsh response from the Obama campaign. 
 
 "Throughout this campaign, Governor Romney has embraced the most strident voices in his party instead of standing up to them," Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt emailed reporters. "It's one thing to give the stage in Tampa to Donald Trump, [Arizona] Sheriff [Joe] Arpaio, and [Kansas Secretary of State] Kris Kobach. But Governor Romney's decision to directly enlist himself in the birther movement should give pause to any rational voter across America." 
 
 The Obama campaign also capitalized on the incident with a fundraising pitch to supporters. In an email with the subject line, "A new low for Mitt Romney," campaign manager Jim Messina asked supporters to "take a moment or two to think about [Romney's remark], what he's actually saying, and what it says about Mitt Romney. Then make a donation of $5 or more to re-elect Barack Obama today." 
 
 The joke, in fact, was a departure from the way Romney has typically handled the "birther" issue. 
 
 "I think the citizenship test has been passed. I believe the president was born in the United States. There are real reasons to get this guy out of office," Romney said in April 2011. Romney this year defended his alliance with Donald Trump, an outspoken "birther," but Romney made clear he disagreed with Trump on the issue. 
 
 When Pelley asked Romney if he agrees Mr. Obama is the "legitimate president of the United States," Romney responded, "I've said that probably 30 times by now, and 31 certainly won't hurt." 
 
 More from Pelley's interview with Romney will air Friday and Monday, August 27 on the CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley. Additional excerpts will air during CBS News' primetime coverage of the Republican National Convention, Tuesday, August 28 through Thursday, August 30, beginning at 10 p.m. ET each night. ||||| COMMERCE, Mich. — In a speech to thousands of supporters at a family orchard outside Detroit Friday afternoon, Mitt Romney tried a joke as he touted his family roots in the state — and got himself in trouble in the process. 
 
 After he and Mrs. Romney both took turns talking about how excited they were to be “home” in Michigan, Romney said, ““Nobody ever has to see my birth certificate. They know this is the place where I was born and raised.” 
 
 The line, which prompted laughter and then cheers from the roughly 5,000 people gathered here, was an apparent reference to the long-debunked conspiracy theory that President Obama was born in Africa, and therefore not Constitutionally qualified to be president. 
 
 But the Romney campaign quickly pushed back against questions about whether Romney was invoking “birtherism.” 
 
 “The governor has always said, and has repeatedly said, he believes the president was born here in the United States,” said adviser Kevin Madden. “He was only referencing that Michigan, where he is campaigning today, is the state where he himself was born and raised.” 
 
 A campaign aide told BuzzFeed, on condition of anonymity, that Romney did not plan the birth certificate joke in advance, and that it was an “off-the-cuff reference to him being a homegrown guy of Michigan” that was wrongly interpreted by the press. 
 
 Still, a spokesman for the Obama campaign seized on the opportunity to decry Romney for extremism. 
 
 “Throughout this campaign, Governor Romney has embraced the most strident voices in his party instead of standing up to them,” said spokesman Ben LaBolt. “It’s one thing to give the stage in Tampa to Donald Trump, Sheriff Arpaio, and Kris Kobach. But Governor Romney’s decision to directly enlist himself in the birther movement should give pause to any rational voter across America.” 
 
 Meanwhile, the reaction from the crowd of Republicans here was largely enthusiastic, with some laughing it off as a politically incorrect joke, and others treating it as a welcome attack on what they believe to be the coverup of the president’s birthplace. 
 
 Asked what he made of Romney’s line, Jim Barzakov, a retiree from Berryville, MI, expressed frustration with reporters’ fixation on the issue. 
 
 “What is it with this birth certificate? It’s every question I get from you guys!” he said. “You must be all liberals! What kind of a question is that?” 
 
 He then said the meaning of the line was simple: “It says Romney has his birth certificate; Obama can’t find his.” Asked about the certificate the White House released last year, Barzakov dismissed it as a “photoshop certificate.” 
 
 Therese Cayline, who works at a real estate management company in Waterford, MI, said she doesn’t consider herself a “birther” — but raised several of the talking points espoused by skeptics of the president’s birth certificate. 
 
 “[Romney] was born and raised in Michigan and as far as Obama goes, his grandma was there at his birth and his grandma has never been outside Kenya,” Cayline said. “So I find it ironic that he won’t show the real birth certificate.” 
 
 But Laura Barnett, 22, from Wesfield, MI, said the birth certificate line was just a joke, not to be taken too seriously. 
 
 “I think people, if they want to make it controversial, they can,” Barnett said. “But I think Romney was just being a little funny. I know the racism is serious and it’s very controversial like I said but I think there’s always room for some humor.”
– Mitt Romney's joke at a rally today that "no one's ever asked to see my birth certificate" is living on. (It was "off the cuff," an aide tells BuzzFeed.) Some reaction: Obama campaign: Romney has long "embraced the most strident voices in his party instead of standing up to them." His "decision to directly enlist himself in the birther movement should give pause to any rational voter across America." Romney himself: "No, no, (it's) not a swipe" at Obama, he tells CBS. "I've said throughout the campaign and before, there's no question about where he was born. He was born in the US. This was fun about us, and coming home. And humor, you know—we've got to have a little humor in a campaign." Greg Sargent, Washington Post: "Maybe this will get chalked up to Romney’s awkwardness and get dismissed, but it looks to me like a major mistake. Coming just after days spent debating Todd Akin’s 'legitimate rape' remark, this is again a reminder of the extreme voices in the GOP, which Romney has at times been slow to denounce." Allahpundit, Hot Air: "In case you’re wondering what it takes to offend a campaign whose allies have accused Romney of tax evasion based on anonymous 'sources' and blamed him for leaving a steelworker’s wife to die from cancer uninsured, here you go." Still, he thinks it was silly of Romney to have handed the media such easy pickings.