The Republican "Birther" Fringe Gets Scary in Delaware

By Robert Schlesinger, Thomas Jefferson Street Blog

If you haven't seen it, I commend this video to you. It's from a town hall meeting led by Rep. Mike Castle, Delaware's moderate Republican House member. He calls on one audience member who stands, starts waving her birth certificate and ranting about President Obama being a citizen of Kenya, and saying, "I want my country back!" The rant and anger fueling it are scary enough. But what's more disturbing is the vehemence with which the crowd cheers her on and then boos Castle when he points out that the president is, in fact, a citizen of the United States. This is very blue state Delaware we're talking about here--not what you would think of as a hotbed of fringe wingnuttery. But as the Washington Independent's Dave Weigel points out, the "birther" movement (people who think that Obama is not a U.S. citizen) is gaining traction on the right. (H/t to Politico's Ben Smith.)

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