Birtherism Is Dead. Long Live Otherism.

Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, and other 2012 contenders don't think Obama was born in Kenya—they're just saying he's not one of us.

— By David Corn
Thu May. 19, 2011 3:00 AM PDT

Mitt Romney has tried to be the adult in the 2012 GOP race. He hasn't echoed the extreme rhetoric of other Republican presidential wannabes or that of his party's tea party base. In mid-April—before President Barack Obama eviscerated the birther movement by releasing his longform birth certificate (and ordering the raid that killed Osama bin Laden)—Romney declared he would have none of that birther nonsense: "I think the citizenship test has been passed. I believe the president was born in the United States." Yet the former Massachusetts governor is still playing footsie with a popular conservative meme: Obama's not really one of us.