Conservative site The Corner has been considering Birthers lately. Jonah Goldberg says that they're not as bad as Truthers, who he considers to be a leftist conspiracy in the same way that Birthers are a conservative conspiracy: ""Birtherism" is dangerous and paranoid and "Trutherism" is quirky and no big deal, according to liberals." I don't believe that Goldberg's assumption is true: I think of Truthers as being more libertarian than anything else. They certainly formed the most vocal majority behind Ron Paul in the 2008 election.

But the best thing to come out of this Corner Birther obsession is the reason why Birthers are doing what they're doing. I had never before thought that Birthers had a goal beyond unseating the president, but now I know what it is:

If Obama is constitutional ineligible to serve as President, then the ballots cast for him are void and invalid and must be disregarded by the Senate. This would also make the ballots void and invalid for Joseph Biden for Vice President since the President and Vice President are elected together. Once the Obama/Biden ballots are disregarded, the winners of the election, which takes place in the Senate where the votes from the Electoral College are counted, would be John McCain as President and Sarah Palin as Vice President.

Moreover, since Obama would legally never have been President, everything he purported to do as President would be a nullity, including signing Obama Care into law and nominating two people to the U.S. Supreme Court.

They think it's possible to literally turn back the clock, Superman-like, and make it November 2008 again, with John McCain as president. This idea is so fucking batshit that I don't know where to begin, except to say that it is possibly more crazy than the idea that Barack Obama was born in Kenya as the pawn of a massive socialist conspiracy that ultimately intended to make him President of the United States.