Kathleen Parker on Birthers, Buffoonery and a Sad Discourse

Kathleen Parker is one of an ever shrinking pool of thinking conservatives who are dismayed at the GOP's continued mad rush to embrace ignorance and descend to the levels of the lowest common denominator of the party's base - which is VERY low nowadays. In a column in the Washington Post, Parker looks at the so-called birthers and the descent of a party that once thought of itself as represented educated and intelligent Americans now defined by morons and those perhaps best placed in mental institutions. Parker means to insult the GOP for what it has become and for the careless enabling of lunatics by high ups in the party. I continue to believe that without serious change, the GOP is headed toward being a sectarian party peopled by only the most bigoted and/or ignorant elements of the population. Here are column highlights:
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If you really, really dislike Barack Obama, his long-form birth certificate, finally proffered in exasperation, is quite simply a counterfeit.
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If you are a fan of the president — or even a respectful critic — you are relieved finally to have rid the country of the plague of “birtherism,” the rabid belief that Obama wasn’t born in this country and isn’t constitutionally qualified to be president.
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[O]ne can’t help wondering when exactly we lost our minds. What are we to make of these crazed factions that become obsessed with conspiracies, unconvinced by facts? Perhaps most important, what is the rest of the world to think of us? Will even third world countries someday (soon) look at the United States and say, “Oh, well, those Americans, they’re crazy, you know”? (If at this point anyone is offended, please feel free to take full possession of the insult.)
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Unfortunately, the plague is not quite spent or conquered. Since Obama issued his “real” birth certificate, which has more information than the shorter “certificate of live birth,” reactions have run the usual gamut. Meaning that many of those who disbelieved still disbelieve. This is beyond depressing.
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[I]t wasn’t only to end the debate that Obama sent for his certificate. According to the vineyard, it was also to prevent other Republican candidates from looking sane by comparison to Trump.
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In a saner time, Trump would be dismissed as the carnival barker Obama implied he is. People would have recognized Trump as a self-aggrandizing megalomaniac and put a period at the end of the sentence. Not remotely would his name be followed with this phrase: “who is leading other Republican candidates in polls.”
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I honestly don’t know what to make of Trump’s popularity nor of the continuing belief that Obama wasn’t born in the 50th state. Yet even otherwise rational people continue to carry on and react as though facts were irrelevant.*
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Alas, there is no reasoning with the unreasonable, too many of whom these days seem to self-identify as Republicans or conservatives. This is as Democrats would have it, needless to say, but no one is served by our national descent into silliness. Sadly missing on the Republican side is the leveling voice of the grown-up who will say not only that he takes Obama’s word (and the clear evidence), but that the Republican Party won’t tolerate further discussion. Case closed.
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Instead, too many seem satisfied to let the fringe inform the base. We dwell in a time when buffoons are elevated and presidents are compelled to respond to the jester. These circumstances cannot bode well for the republic.