There's a long distance from "one wacko tried to "birth" Obama" (and got absolutely nowhere with it in court) to "there is tons of evidence Obama is a Kenyan Mau mau and is doing everything he can to stifle the facts". And it's even further to "it's must be OK because it started with the Clintons".

Check my post on Manchurian Candidate John McCain on "Mysteries of the Universe", a vicious (or should I say "viscous") rumour which was started by conservatives. A particularly nasty smear was started (by Democrats) that George H W Bush abandoned his aircrew to death by cowardly parachuting prematurely from his crippled dive bomber. But it was immediately squelched by his Democratic opponent. And don't forget the cruise of the swiftboats.

The issue is not that dirty campaign tricks don't happen on both sides, as they have from the earliest days of the Republic. The question is why haven't those who know perfectly well these smears are untrue look the other way and either pretend they don't see them, or only deny them in the most lukewarm and unconvincing way? And now, the plan seems to be to actually blame Democrats for the smears on Democrats. This goes way beyond differences in ideology, they just seem to plain hate this guy.

Again, kudos to Mitt Romney for his condemnation, of this nonsense, and to McCain for calling out and challenging the campaign supporter who tried to get him to insult Obama during an election rally.

I'm not tucking tail and running, I'm doing a hand throw and eye roll.