The Atlantic smears Portman over birther issue

Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic Monthly posted this recently regarding Ohio’s U.S. Senate candidate Rob Portman.

Et tu, Rob Portman? Ye of sensibility and rectitude? Ye of maturity and political resolve?  Despite inquires from the Cincinnati Enquirer and Plain Dealer, Portman’s campaign won’t directly answer the question of whether the candidate believes that President Obama is a citizen. (Obama is.) So now, we’re up to five Republican Senate candidates — major ones, not including J.D. Hayworth in Arizona for the moment — who have flirted with Birtherism.

Passive unacknowledgment now passes as “flirting” in today’s day and age of hyper-partisan invective, at least according to The Atlantic Monthly. Ambinder sets aside his inner Andrew Sullivan for a moment and follows with this.

Portman did not reproach his surrogates at an event for joking that Portman was “an American lawyer” and Obama wasn’t. His campaign later issued a statement saying the remarks were not appropriate but blasting Democrats for trying to move the focus from issues to trivial matters. One can understand why Portman would be uncomfortable rebuking folks who were saying nice things about him, but the campaign seems to want to thread the needle by denouncing the comments — in the non-specific. Whatever the Portman campaign intends, his campaign’s response leaves open the possibility that Portman doesn’t necessarily find the question illegitimate. The way this particular controversy goes away is to answer the question, and not ignore it. A quick “yes” moves everything forward, a quick “no” angers his base. But an answer-the-subject-not-the-question response doesn’t work.

What Ambinder is referring to is a speech Portman gave before an audience in Darke County recently. Two previous speakers at the podium made birth-certificate jokes. Portman followed and didn’t bring the issue up. Ambinder suggets the Enquirer and the Plain Dealer made inquiries into Portman’s position on the subject, but didn’t post links, so we’ll just have to take him for his word.

Being the concerned anti-birther Buckeye that I am, I did what Ambinder didn’t – I inquired to Portman’s staff, where someone replied with this copy-and-paste of an editorial from The Columbus Dispatch by senior editor Joe Hallett.

At a recent Darke County Republican Party dinner, two warm-up speakers made “birther” jokes questioning whether Obama was born in the United States and, thus, legally eligible to be president. When his turn came to speak, Portman rightly ignored the comments.

Democrats pounced, claiming that Portman’s silence was a tacit admission that he supported the widely discredited birther theory. On Thursday, I received an e-mail from the Democrats breathlessly proclaiming: “Day 5 of Portman Birther Controversy.”

I had coffee last week with a delightful and intelligent young woman sent from Washington to Columbus by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. She will remain here through the general election, and her full-time job – although she doesn’t portray it this way – is to dirty-up Portman.

Last week, she wrote a press release quoting herself as saying that Portman engages in “offensive tactics.” All of Portman’s public appearances are videotaped by two Democratic operatives assigned to dog him for fresh fodder.

This is how Hallett opened his editorial.

Rob Portman of Cincinnati, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, does not believe Democrats are Nazis and he does not believe President Barack Obama was born somewhere other than the United States.

I didn’t really need to ask. I’ve known Portman for years – well enough to know that he is not a crackpot. In fact, he is a thoroughly decent person, honorable, honest and intelligent. He would represent Ohio well in the Senate.

Hallett is complimentary of the Democratic candidates as well , brushing aside the partisanship for a moment. One wonders if Ambinder will care to make mention of this editorial from the most influential paper in the state, or if he’ll demand every Republican Senatorial candidate answer to whether they’ve stopped beating their wives.

This game is rather trivial. As Hallett mentioned, the Democrats have hired full-time people to tape Portman daily and search for moments to tie him up in anything that doesn’t regard for the issues or the actual campaign. This is a tactic played by both sides, but used relentlessly by the usual hired-gun types and pundit-activist scream-machines like Keith Olbermann, who called Scott Brown a misogynist for what someone anonymously yelled from the crowd at a campaign rally. Is this the new standard of journalism? What would Orwell call this – NewsSilence?

Neither Hallett nor Ambinder believe Portman is a “birther,” but what Ambinder is demanding is for Portman to willingly fall into a classic media trap, just to assuage the very people who will run his soundbyte non-stop for the six months ad nauseam, all while accusing Portman of playing the birther card for political game. What Hallett said strikes true – this is McCarthyistic. It’s just as bad faith as anything the birthers have done.

If Portman would rather ignore the existence of the whole conspiracy instead of pulling his campaign to a full-stop, then good for him, he’s an example the media should start following.

Share on Facebook