Another huge poll and guess what? Almost 50% of Republicans believe President Obama is not born in America. That's a John Birch Society mentality people From the New York Times article that appeared on the newspaper’s website Thursday morning,
April 23, 2011

Another huge poll and guess what? Almost 50% of Republicans believe President Obama is not born in America. That's a John Birch Society mentality people

From the New York Times article that appeared on the newspaper’s website Thursday morning, came this passage [emphasis added]:

A plurality of Republican voters, 47 percent, said they believed Mr. Obama, who was born in Hawaii, was born in another country; 22 percent said they did not know where he was born, and 32 percent said they believed he was born in the United States.
The remarkable poll result was just the latest indication of how the-world-is-flat-type of conspiracy about the president’s birth certificate has thoroughly infiltrated the Republican Party and conservative movement in America, to the point where nearly half of Republicans believe the lie. (Take a bow Fox News.) To the point where half of Republicans don’t think Obama is eligible to hold office.

You'd think it would be a big story since it came from the NY Times, right? Nope. They made it disappear.

First, in the original article, the newspaper completely buried the birther lede. Rather than highlighting the blockbuster poll finding, the Times gave the embarrassing news only a glancing reference and stuck the results deep down in the story, devoting just two sentences to the birther revelation. Sidestepping the thorny issue, the Times instead pegged the news story around the fact that Republican voters aren’t enthusiastic about their possible White House candidates. (Hint: That’s not exactly breaking news.)

Second, the much-talked about birther passage from the Times’ polling piece soon disappeared; it was removed from the original article, without explaination. Readers now clicking on the Times link, which continues to whip around the Internet, aren’t informed that a plurality of Republicans believe Obama was born in a foreign country. In fact, readers aren’t told anything about those results. (A different article in the Times today makes a passing reference to the poll’s findings.) For some reason yesterday, the Times’ birther scoop disappeared.

Dave and I called this first in our book, Over The Cliff, when we discussed at length how the GOP and FOX News mainstreamed their Bircher side into the mix so they could whip up opposition to Obama. Now they have to live with it, but why did the NY Times bury it? At least Andrea Mitchell did a segment on this today on MSNBC.

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