Mittens Rallies White Party Voters with Birther "Jokes"

From [HERE] MITT ROMNEY yesterday risked distracting from his promises to turn around the struggling US economy by reviving the controversy over the president's birthplace. On the eve of his party's convention, the biggest event of his campaign, the Republican challenger toyed with the widely discredited conspiracy theory that Mr Obama is ineligible to serve as president because he was born in Kenya and not the US. 

"I love being home, in this place where Ann and I were raised, where both of us were born," Mr Romney told a rally in his home state of Michigan, after introducing his wife. He added: "No one has ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place that we were born and raised."

Mr Obama has repeatedly faced claims that he was not born in Hawaii. Opinion polls suggest as many as 45 per cent of Republican voters agree with the theory. They dismiss a birth certificate published by the White House last year as a fake, and regard Hawaiian newspaper birth reports from the time as being part of the conspiracy.

The Obama campaign said Mr Romney's remarks put him among so-called "birthers" such as Donald Trump, the racist property tycoon.

"Governor Romney's decision to directly enlist himself in the birther movement should give pause to any rational voter across America," said Ben LaBolt, Mr Obama's campaign press secretary. The remark was greeted by cheers and laughter from the thousands of Republican supporters in the city of Commerce, close to where Mr Romney grew up.

Romney aides stressed that he had been joking. Kevin Madden, an adviser, told reporters: "The governor has always said, and has repeatedly said, he believes the president was born here in the US."

However, Dr Roderick Harrison, a sociologist at Howard University specialising in race, said the remarks by the former Massachusetts governor were "very surprising" and had "racist implications". "Elements of the Republican Party believe Obama is not genuinely American in his values - that he is at best internationalist and at worst involved in radical Islam," said Dr Harrison. 

The remark drew unfavourable comparisons to Senator John McCain, Mr Obama's opponent in 2008, who confronted a supporter shouting during a rally that Mr Obama was an "Arab".

"He's not," Mr McCain told her. "He's a decent family man and citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues."

Mr Romney's comment came an hour after Paul Ryan, his vice-presidential candidate, reiterated a claim made frequently by Mr Romney that their campaign does not deal in trivial topics raised by Mr Obama's team to distract voters from the economy. 

"We're going to make this about ideas," Mr Ryan said. "We're going to make this about a positive vision for the future."