At CPAC, Obama is a Commie foreigner

When one speaker at the conservative conference suggested that the president wasn't born in the U.S., the audience erupted.

Published February 26, 2009 9:35PM (EST)

Apparently, there is one sure way to get applause at the Conservative Political Action Conference, which began today and continues through Saturday: Suggest that Barack Obama was born in a foreign country and isn't really eligible to be president.

At the very least, as Think Progress notes, Cliff Kincaid of the conservative press watchdog Accuracy in Media got a very warm reception when he made that suggestion during a talk on Thursday. And, of course, he threw in a little Red-baiting too.

"Back during the 1980's, we had a president who was anti-Communist," Kincaid said. "Back during hate 1980's, at least we knew that our president was born in the United States."

Video of Kincaid's comments, and the audience's response, is below. (What Kincaid said about the president isn't even the worst part -- he also misquoted Jimi Hendrix's "Manic Depression.")

As readers of this blog are no doubt aware by now, I really, really hate to say I told you so. But I told you so. More than a month has now passed since Obama was inaugurated, and clearly a fair amount of people at the year's biggest meeting of conservatives still believe the long since discredited conspiracy theories about his birth.

Separately, Philip Berg, who was one of the first instigators of the slew of unsuccessful lawsuits challenging Obama's eligibility but who's taken a back seat in the movement recently, told radio host Michael Savage recently that he believes the president is an illegal alien who "should be arrested and deported."


By Alex Koppelman

Alex Koppelman is a staff writer for Salon.

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