President Obama’s first term brought no shortage of conspiracy theories, from birtherism to suggestions that the Affordable Care Act included death panels.
Here's the latest bizarre theory: President Obama is secretly planning to run for a third term in office. Investment adviser and conservative Porter Stansberry says that President Obama will follow in the footsteps of Theodore Roosevelt, who ran for a non-consecutive third term in 1912, or Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who ran for a third consecutive term in 1940.
According to Stansberry, a booming oil industry gives the president an extra edge when it comes to reelection, and he predicts President Obama will take advantage of the success of today’s U.S. shale industry. “He's going to use all that power and leverage to propel himself into a third term,” Stansberry said on the “Alex Jones Radio Show” earlier this month.
Of course, Stansberry fails to factor in the stipulations of the 22nd Amendment, which states that “no person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice." The amendment was passed in 1951, after Franklin Delano Roosevelt had left office. Congress would need to pass an additional amendment to repeal the 22nd Amendment, which would then need to be ratified by three-fourths of the states, in order for President Obama to be eligible to run again in 2016. What are the odds of Congress coming together in a bipartisan matter to do away with term limits?
Take a look at Hardball’s Sideshow for Chris’s take on this prediction about a third term for President Obama.