Hear me out,

There is no doubt in my mind that birthers are motivated by a combination of partisanship and racism in some form or another. I believe that what motivates most birthers to continue this conspiracy is not merely to feed their insecurities or personal dislikes about Obama, but there is an inner hope that by throwing everything including the kitchen sink, something will stick long enough to push Obama out of office. I think if we take away the motivs to create enough doubt or force to get Obama out of office, whether it be through voting or impeachment, you take away the push for many birthers.

If Obama were to win the elections this year for a second term, I think we will begin to see a major decline in birtherism through the first year of that second term. Think about it, if the president get's a second term:

1. It will once again demonstrate that birtherism isn't a major issue nationally considering that Obama received enough votes to win again,
2. A second term for Obama will take away to motivation for any birther politicians to push any more birther bills, because then they will only really apply to the next president, who may verywell end up being another white southern man.
3. The courts will have all the more reason to dismiss birther lawsuits, considering that birther lawsuits were delt with and dismissed on their merits in the previous term, courts would see no reason to continue this especially in the second term.

At this point birtherism will only consist of the very faithful and dedicated and the money makers (WND). Do other fogbowers agree?

They will continue to milk it for 4 more years, and then perhaps longer if another Democrat (Hillary perhaps) is elected. I have no doubt in my mind at all about that.

When Obama is re-elected, the most intelligent thing that a birther could do would be to convince a US Senator & US Representative to object to his qualifications on the floor of Congress during the joint session.

But that would require a birther do do something intelligent, which is a long shot.

Of course the birthers would still lose, but the way they would lose would be Constitutional.

Birthers will being filing suits until 2017 (and beyond, perhaps) in an effort to undo everything Obama has done.

100+ losses and being the media's punchline is but a speedbump.

It in some ways depends on whether more birthers and in particular birther attorneys are sanctioned. If it becomes expensive for a birther lawsuit to be filed (and we have a very small number of birther attorneys), I predict more citizen grand juries and fake trials and probably two to ten fake sentencings. WND will continue to have Arpaio (or whomever else they put on their payroll) issue press conferences.

My main concern is with the Dr k(H)ate segment of the birther movement. The ones who think that Obama is a puppet of the NWO/Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy (although even I was slightly surprised that they dragged the Protocols of the Elders of Zion into it). My greatest fear is that after the election, certain aspects birfistan will regard the "stealing" of 2012 as the last barrier to implementing Marxist One World Sharia Government. The potential then for a national tragedy will be quite high, both from November-January of this year and perhaps during the election of 2016, which might be seen as a charade that "Soetoro" will probably cancel.

Are you Justin in that Wolf suit?

When Obama is re-elected the birthers will get a second wind. They will infect even more mainstream GOP officials and by 2015 it will be a main plank of the Federal GOP platform.

Birthers who claim to know the law better than anyone else, including federal judges, aren't going to let a little thing like 100+ court losses stand in their way. These delusional buffoons will continue to claim the courts don't understand the law, and that they (birthers) do.

Who cares what birfers think or are going to do? All they do is waste their money, taxpayer money and court time.

What are the disgruntled racists going to do if he wins?

While the polls don't currently reflect the national mood, I believe there is going to be a huge backlash against the Republican Party and that the Dems will re-take control of the House. I think that birthers will eventually be marginalized, but there will first be a fight for the heart of the Republican Party that will lead to a split and marginalization of the more extreme elements of the party into a new political party. That offshoot will embrace the birthers and itself be marginalized further.

From your pixels to God's eyeballs, Stern.

How'd that backlash thingy work out in Wisconsin? I do not see, in voting patterns since last November, anything remotely approaching any backlash.

If anything, there's a doubling down on the stupid.

Don't read too much into Wisconsin. A large portion of othewise Democratic voters felt that the recall was too politically motivated and voted to retain because they felt that the recall should be reserved for crimes and other misconduct, not for dumb-assed political moves by a duly elected Governor.

As Tip O'Neil liked to say, all politics is local.

IIRC, the Wisconsin Senate is no longer a GOP rubber stamp for the Governor. The balance of power has shifted a bit away from the GOP. Also, one of the GOP Senators was not going along with the radical changes.

^this

That doesn't excuse votes in other places and the left's complete lack of ability to either frame the conversation or actually accomplish anything of note. The congress hasn't passed a budget the whole time since georgie left office.

And Obama isn't winning the independents by continuing the combat raids on both medical marijuana facilities and civilians in the various countries around Afghanistan.

Do not assume November is in the bag. Not only is it not a sure thing, there's every indication that the dems will get their collective heads handed to them at the ballot box.

I do think birthers will continue even when the next democrat is elected. For years the right tried to delegitimize Clinton's presidency. I think it will continue onward. However, I think we might see some birthers getting violent as many will start trumpeting that now that he's re-elected and can't be elected to another term he will declare martial law and end elections. They will start plotting to overthrow the government and we will see more random attacks on law enforcement.

Divide and conquer. Hopefully before November, not after.

Too bad Orly is not smart enough to lead the lemmings of the new political party. She would have made the marginilization complete, if that's even possible.

What will they do?

See a massive spike in donations/public support from disgruntled mainstream GOPers who are only interested in getting Obama out of the office.

Fellow Fogbowers, I come to you close to 6 months following the start of this thread to once again establish my point that birtherism is on the way down.

Ever since Obama won a second term, birtherism has hit an all time low in the online community I participate in. Some birthers are even beginning to turn on other birthers. Since Obama won the second term, motivation for pushing this conspiracy is at a low. For one thing, he won for a second time, despite the nonsense that had been spread by birthers, birthers appear to have exhausted all efforts.

Now I do see some final birther efforts this year, but by 2014, don't expect much folks.

Birtherism is a conspiracy theory. It's up there with the Face on Mars, the Kennedy Assassination nutters, the Moon Landing Hoaxists, and the Flat Earthers. Like all conspiracy theories, it has a half life that's best measured in millennia. The birthers will continue to decline and become less significant, but they will not vanish from this earth.

More importantly, their hatred is not going to vanish either. The amount of hatred that is directed at President Obama is painful to watch. Birtherism is one of the more virulent forms, but there are others and as one declines others will pick up. For at least the next four years, I plan to keep a close eye on the hatred and continue to do what I can to keep putting spokes in their wheels.

I'm not sure one community is representative of the entire population (whatever that happens to be).

If nothing else I'd say that while the volume of birfer activity may be waning, the intensity of what remains appears to be increasing (think current versus voltage, or heat versus temperature).

Signal...............DOWN

Noise................UP

By now, surveys prove that up to a slight majority of all registered Republicans nationally are birthers. They don't care about facts. They just "know." Obama isn't real. He's a Muslim who's playing shenanigans with his college records because he was born in Kenya, or was born in Hawaii and pretended to be born in Kenya to win all those "born in Kenya" scholarships, or something. That set of core beliefs, burning bright with the stupid, will remain in their heads until 2017.

What will they do about it? Not much. Smart Republicans will shake their heads and hope the next Democratic nominee isn't another articulate darkie, so they don't get clobbered by the darkie vote again due to the racist foundation of their birther colleagues. But birther lawsuits? They are pushed by only, what, 5 or 6 birther lawyers at the most? That's a small band of merry idiots who, although in agreement with a slight majority of all registered Republicans, are not actually representing any national movement. These 5 or 6 nuts are either mentally insane or publicity whores seeking to push book sales or whatever. Politically insignificant, but persistent. They will not stop unless substantially sanctioned.

True, but how much airplay does the Face on Mars get, or Flat Earthing? No politicians I know of see any advantage whatsoever in coddling the Flat Earthers, for instance. I have never seen an "Earther" bill filed by even the biggest dingbat in the craziest state legislature. There's no political advantage to it.

As for the Kennedy Assassination, that's in a special category of undying conspiracy theories. At its core is a fundamentally traumatic event for society, almost certainly perpetrated by an odd person with a lot of strange connections to oddball political groups. I have yet to see a conspiracy theory about it that is more plausible than the "official explanation," but that explanation itself remains oddly unsatisfying. Of course, much of the conspiracy theorizing dives off into the rabbit hole of pure lunacy. Even the established facts about Lee Harvey Oswald are practically custom-made for conspiracy theories.

Even the Kennedy conspiracy theories, though, don't have very much political traction any more.

I think after this inauguration, there may be a brief flurry of birther bills and similar nonsense in state legislatures, one of the dumbest U.S. House Reps may birf out briefly, and the same nutcases will continue filing kook suits. However, I think this conspiracy theory as a viable political strategy, either by coy Republicans responding with a wink to birthers or by actual crazies introducing birther bills, is basically past its sell-by date.

I think the real barometer of when this is basically over, except as a fringe pursuit, is when you see scam operations like WND, which operate solely to make money, drop it from their clown show, when you see attention whores like Donald Trump, who operate solely to see themselves on TV, drop it from their entertainment schtick becuase it isn't getting them airtime, and even the wingnuttiest politicians drop it from their litanies of lunacy.

At the point you have the grifters leave because there's nothing more to grift, birtherism is well on its way to Face on Mars territory. I don't think you fully hit this until long after Obama is out of office, but as with half-lives, you eventually hit a point it is so marginalized that it basically doesn't exist as a political force.

After the current batch of birther lawsuits and any batch filed on or near the inauguration, and whatever minor interest the appeals of those lawsuits get, it's basically over. We'll certainly have enough to watch, but we may be about the only people watching by that point.

That may, interestingly, be exactly the point at which the case law on this subject starts to be interesting, although much of that will take place in things like the Federal Supplement and Federal Appendix, and little of it, except perhaps an Orly-related sanctions case or two, has much chance of making any textbooks.