Conflation

Obama's releasing his long form birth certificate didn't have much effect on Birthers, except that a few of the nuttier Repubs (eg: Michelle Bachman) kinda backed off a little.  But then, Osama bin Laden is taken down, and new polls indicate a near collapse in support for the opinion that Obama was likely born outside of the US.

For me, that comes as close as anybody will ever get to proving that it was just another example of a political party playing to the worst impulses in some people.  It was always and only about trying to delegitimize Obama's presidency.

And here's the sweet juicy fleshy part:  Jr Bush beat Gore and then Kerry by playing up the Manliness Quotient.  Bush wore the costume of the Great American Cowboy, he drove a pickup and he spent time "on the land" clearing brush, etc.  He was practically built from scratch to look and sound and act like our ideal of the typical American workin' guy's hero.  A father figure; somebody with big plans, and big swag, and a big dick.  And that big swingin' dick was never more evident than when Bush was making threats.  Bush talkin' smack about somebody was the basic theme for his whole time in office.  9-11 was the best thing that ever happened for that bozo, because it allowed him to play up the macho bullshit in order to hide the simple fact that he didn't have the intellectual horsepower God gave the average houseplant.

And that's how the Repubs have rolled.  There's probably a dozen or more examples of how Repubs have torn down real heroes who were running for office in order to give us cheap imitations.

Now they have a real challenge.  They spent all that time and energy carefully making OBL into this Uber Villain, only to have the wonky dithering law professor end up being the guy who took him down.  They have to figure out how to attack Obama for having done exactly what they said only a Super Manly Republican could do.