A stunning new poll shows that only a minority of Americans – 42 percent – believes the President of the United States was born in this country and is therefore eligible for the office.The new CNN survey, released today, found just 23 percent of Republicans believe that Obama is a native-born American. This means that most Americans and three-quarters of Republicans harbor either the belief, or the suspicion, that the president is an illegal alien – that he was not born here, never went through an naturalization process, and therefore is a potential subject for deportation.This will strike many reading this as crazy. Do people really mean it when they tell pollsters they do not believe that President Obama was "definitely born in the US?" Do people really believe that he was born in Kenya – and, if so, to a Kenyan mother? Or that he was born in Indonesia?Do they really believe that the announcement of Barack Obama's birth in the Honolulu newspapers in August of 1961 and the standard certificate released by the state of Hawaii were part of a long-term, well-executed conspiracy to create the appearance of his birth on that day? Were there people around in 1961 who wanted to create this presidency forty-nine years later? Who was determined to have someone who was only about to be born elected to lead this country? Is this something that the people who question his birth really believe?Or is this constant drumbeat of propaganda from the Birthers an effort to undermine this presidency by grinding in doubts about his Americanness? Is it aimed at disabling this administration politically?And are the people who are doing this – perpetrating it, pushing it day after day by false statements, innuendo and professed doubts – in fact the worst kind of citizens? Are they, no matter how much they claim to be patriotic, really the most un-American people because they want to destroy this president, not because of what he does, but because of who he is, and not because of where he was born, but because of what race he was born?Is this the big lie that they dare not admit? Do they know full well that he's an American, and are they simply out to destroy him personally – yes, assassinate him – with their lies?
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