We saw another Whoa, this is just wrong moment on Meet The Press today.
First David Gregory showed a Frank Lunz focus group being asked if they thought President Obama was a Muslim. Of course many did say they believe him to be a Muslim.
Gregory then asked Speaker Boehner,
"don't you think it's your responsibility to stand up against such ingnorance?"
Boehner: 'It's not my job to tell the American people what to think'.
"The state of Hawaii has said he was born there. That's good enough for me," Boehner said. "The president says he's a Christian. I accept him at his word."
Three times Gregory pressed him to admit that it was his responsibility to stand up and tell the people (birthers) the truth. Three times Boehner dodged his responsibility. Gregory even said as sternly as I've ever seen him, "as part of the leadership of your party, isn't it your responsibility to give these people the facts?" Nada, Nada, Nada.
So once again, the Republican LEADERSHIP chooses not to tell people that they are wrong, that they are doing a disservice to the country and the President when they play conspiracy theories with the President's birth place. Once again, Speaker Boehner chooses not to say, "whoa, that's just wrong."
This quote from 2010 deserves to be repeated.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
But these leaders do have a consistent ideology, and that ideology plays to the lock-and-load nutcases out there, not just to the peaceable (if riled up) populist conservatives also attracted to Tea Partyism. This ideology is far more troubling than the boilerplate corporate conservatism and knee-jerk obstructionism of the anti-Obama G.O.P. Congressional minority