Mitt Romney's birther joke: Did he cross the line?

The GOP's presidential candidate makes a wisecrack about birth certificates, and President Obama's supporters cry foul

Mitt Romney campaigns in Commerce, Mich.
(Image credit: AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

On Friday, Mitt Romney made a joke that seemed to ally him firmly with the birther movement. On a campaign stop in Michigan — where both he and his wife, Ann, were born — Romney said: "No one's ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place that we were born and raised." (See video below.) Team Obama said it was bad enough when nut-job Romney surrogates like Donald Trump question whether the president was born in the U.S., but Romney's "decision to directly enlist himself in the birther movement should give pause to any rational voter across America." A Romney adviser said the GOP presidential candidate has never questioned Obama's birthplace, and was merely expressing pride in his Michigan roots. Was Romney's line a harmless crowd-pleaser, or an unpresidential low blow?

Romney went way too far: Of course Romney doesn't really buy the right-wing fringe's birther nonsense, says Greg Sargent at The Washington Post, but his little zinger was still huge mistake. On the heels of Todd Akin's "legitimate rape" remark, it's a fresh "reminder of the extreme voices in the GOP, which Romney has, at times, been slow to denounce." This lame joke makes him look "less than presidential, to put it mildly," and raises questions about his judgment and character.

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