This is true, Obama was doing very well even when Jack Ryan was pre-scandal. A month before the release of information about Ryan’s divorce, Obama was ahead 53% to 30% in a statewide poll by the most conservative of the Chicago daily newspapers.*
Ryan might have stayed on as the candidate even if the truth about his divorce proceedings had come out, but he lied to the officials of the Illinois GOP and told them why no, there was absolutely nothing embarrassing in his sealed divorce records that were about to be opened. Even before Ryan’s candidacy imploded, there was local news coverage about how well this young, up-and-coming guy was doing all up and down the state and how people even in the more traditionally Republican parts of the state were showing up to his visits to their communities and came away impressed.
Jim Oberweis was in the primary for the Republican candidate in that race, and his backers wanted him to take over the spot (IIRC Oberweis himself had expressed a desire to get back in the running as well) but he was not selected. Considering he had made himself unpopular with the White House at the time due to his views on immigration, I suspect the IL GOP eliminated him from consideration for that reason. And Keyes? At the time I said he was the sacrificial lamb, and they had to go all the way to Maryland to find someone else willing to run against Obama with his popularity rating.
That paper, the Chicago Tribune, broke its long history in presidential endorsements by this year endorsing a Democratic candidate for the first time. They also endorsed the senior US senator from Illinois, Dick Durbin, over his Republican challenger, and praised his accomplishments.
I wasn’t complaining about GOP racism, ivylass; I remind you that I used to be Republican until they threw fiscal responsibility to the geese. I was joking.
There was a birth announcement in the Honolulu paper. Damn those conspirators, they thought of everything! They had the foresight, in 1961, to put an announcement in a Hawaiian paper about a baby born in Kenya, knowing that one day he would be elected POTUS.
This whole questioning of his citizenship is stupid - he was born in Hawaii, which makes him a citizen. His mother was a US citizen at the time of his birth, which makes him a citizen. How retarded are these people?
How odd. This is the first I’ve heard of this, as it hasn’t been covered on any of the appellate blogs. If SCOTUS is indeed considering this case in conference today, insiders don’t give it odds of being granted cert as it’s not listed here. But if they vote to hear it, they’ll announce that Monday.
But, yeah, talk about an uphill battle. “I know he was born in the US to a US mother – but he had a non-US dad! And, um, I know he has a US passport and all, but he totally could have changed citizenships some time!”
What is the means for renouncing one’s U.S. citizenship? I think we’ve had some threads on that subject, but I don’t know the answer. Would she have renounced her citizenship if she became a resident or citizen of Kenya?
I don’t think the conspiracy theorists are claiming #3 though, are they? Presumably renouncing citizenship generates some paperwork, and since such paperwork doesn’t exist, it would give them yet another fact they’d have to explain away.
I’ve heard varying things on what the citizenship of a child is if he’s born in a foreign country with only one US citizen as parent.