Conservative Pundits vs Birthers

I was recently forced to sit through an extended segment at the health club where journalist extraordinaire Al Sharpton mocked Donald Trump's feud with Bill Maher - heavy stuff, I know.  It was all mockery and fluffed up controversy and not much substance.  Woulda preferred to turn it off.

This is way off topic an I'm wading into slimy waters here, post Obama's second election it probably doesn't matter at all.  But this post is not so much about where Barack Obama was born as it is about how the "birther" question has been handled by the conservative media.
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Of course, media on the left will dismiss and ridicule anyone who questions the eligibility of the president as a nut case.  Labeling conservatives as morons has been a surprisingly effective strategy for the party of Pelosi, Biden and Kerry.

What I don't get is why a number of otherwise right leaning commentators have handled the issue in the same way as most on the left, that is, rather than addressing the question with a straightforward counterpoint, substantive arguments and legal consideration, they often simply resort to ridicule.

Bill O'Reilly in all his pomp has usually been just dismissive.  Michael Medved has usually been just annoyed.  Anne Coulter on occasion gets downright rude about this question.   They play right into the narrative they seemingly want to avoid - birthers are kooks, so we need to keep our distance - thus confirming the narrative of the left and sadly, keeping the controversy alive.  If the birthers are in fact kooks, then the best strategy would seem to be to cut the roots of the whole tree - get to the central argument and defeat it.

To begin, almost nobody frames the question in a way that leads to any sort of intelligent discussion of the issue the "birthers" seem to be raising.   I personally assume the president was born in Hawaii, (Anne Coulter, for example, has cited a newspaper birth announcement as a primary source of evidence on that one - not exactly a slam-dunk, in my opinion).  But by framing the eligibility question as a matter of where he was born, the viewpoint of those who question Obama's eligibility is already misrepresented.

If I understand the issue the so-called birthers raise, where Barack Obama was born is a secondary issue. The central issue raised is this:

First - The constitution, according to the birther case, requires a president to be a "natural born citizen".  At question then is "what constitutes the legal definition of 'natural born' citizen?", particularly what did the law state at the time of Obama's birth.

It is the position of those who believe Obama is and has been ineligible, that being a "citizen" as in a naturalized citizen, is not sufficient to hold the office of President.  Those who see Obama as ineligible believe that there is a sufficient legal case to show that "natural born" means that at least one and probably both parents need to have been citizens, and on that count, they say, Obama does not qualify - a simple cut and dried matter. 

As an example, someone who immigrates to the US is not eligible because he is not a citizen.  If he becomes a naturalized citizen he is still ineligible in this view.  If, after becoming a citizen, he marries a citizen and has children, those children are eligible because their parents were citizens.   The parents are naturalized, the children are natural born.  It is really a fairly simple position to understand and articulate, but in the mainstream media and even on most conservative outlets, if the issue is discussed at all it is never discussed in these terms.

So here is the heart of the birther case.  All one needs to know is whether one or both of Obama's parents were citizens.  It does not matter whether he was born in Hawaii or not, if this legal reasoning is true.

Which leads to the second simple question:  As I understand it, Obama's own autobiography makes it pretty clear that his father was not a citizen.  So if  the legal case is indeed that both parents must be citizens for Obama to be natural born, then Obama is by his own admission ineligible, or so the "birthers" claim.  Again a simple matter. 

What I don't know (and I really don't spend a lot of time in this realm) is whether Obama's mother was a citizen, and if she was, whether that was sufficient for him to be deemed "natural born" citizen.  Hence all the concern over the birth certificate as it would firmly establish dates, parentage, location, etc.

It should be pointed out that birthers are at least consistent, in that they question the eligibility of Marco Rubio on similar grounds and many birthers would not support Rubio if he ran for president on those grounds.  Democrats are not consistent as they once questioned John McCain's eligibility based on his birth taking place off American soil while criticizing the birthers for a more substantive objection.

I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable of the laws to have any sort of authoritative opinion and I don't know if the legal question raised is complete or correct.  Like Medved, Malkin and Coulter, part of me wishes it would just go away.  The "birthers" may well be wrong, but the questions asked are simple and straightforward - I don't see any reason to think they are nut cases.  They make a simple rational argument that can be refuted by showing that:

1) "natural born" does not apply to Obama either by legal precedent or some other rational explanation and
2) one or both of Obama's parents were citizens making him "natural born"

Answer those two simple questions definitively and there is no further controversy.  If the birther case is in fact wrong on the merits, it should be able to be logically defeated rather quickly.  All the concern Medved, Malkin, O'Reilley and others have about the birthers making the right look bad could be short circuited in a heartbeat if the central question was simply addressed.

But instead of refuting the claim on the merits, even conservative commentators are simply dismissive.

The reason I find it curious is because of 30 years of observation of the pro-life movement, where a simple question posed by the pro-life side, "is the unborn fetus a living human being" has been studiously avoided and almost never engaged by the other side.

I see it all the time in the Theistic Evolution camp where the central question of naturalistic assumptions is an invisible oppressive cloud that is always covered over by "facts" or "scientific consensus"  arguments.

I see it  in the gay marriage debate where substantive questions about the nature of parenthood are not discussed because simply raising a question leads to charges of bigotry.

Controversies cannot be solved by ignoring the central question.  Is the unborn child a living human being or not?   Is it a valid, verifiable assumption that all events have a purely natural cause?  Is marriage related to parenthood?  Was Barack Obama born to parents who were US Citizens?

I don't know if it is an inability to stay on topic or a willing and willful plan to avoid the central questions in every case, but it does seem odd for otherwise reasonable people to fail to address the central idea of an argument.

I have no illusions that anything will come of the "birther" case.  I generally want to avoid it myself.  But the responses from conservative pundits just makes me curious.