Where’s Mitt Romney’s Long-Form Birth Certificate?

GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney.<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mittromney/7257238066/sizes/z/in/photostream/">Mitt Romney</a>/Flickr

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


On Tuesday, GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney released his birth certificate. The timing was fitting—it came the same day he was scheduled to appear at a Las Vegas fundraiser hosted by Donald Trump, the real estate magnate and reality television star who has spent much of the last year promoting conspiracy theories about President Obama’s place of birth and his intelligence.

Just one problem: The document released by Mitt Romney’s campaign is titled “Certificate of Live Birth.” This is, to be clear, the same thing as a birth certificate (it just has a couple of extra words in there and the order is flipped around). But according to three years of commentary from top conservative media and politicos, it’s not enough. “There’s a difference between a birth certificate, apparently, and a certificate of live birth,” said Fox News host Jeanine Pirro in a segment last April on the President’s supposedly missing paper trail. The President’s certificate of live birth, reported Fox and Friends host Steve Doocy, “is not the exact birth certificate.” Sarah Palin suggested that the certificate of live birth was insufficient proof of citizenship.

As one leading conservative activist put it, “A ‘birth certificate’ and a ‘certificate of live birth’ are in no way the same thing, even though in some cases they use some of the same words.” That was Donald Trump.

On Wednesday, Michigan Democrats circulated a video of Rep. Pete Hoekstra, who’s seeking the GOP Senate nomination in that state, proposing the creation of a federal birther committee to inspect presidential candidates’ birth certificates and determine their veracity. “[W]e lost that debate in 2008, when our presidential nominee said, ‘I ain’t talking about it,'” Hoekstra says, in response to a question about Obama’s birth certificate. Obama did released a certificate of live birth in 2008, so presumably Hoekstra deemed that insufficient.

We missed the press release from Trump, Palin, and Hoekstra demanding Romney come clean with his long-form birth certificate. Maybe they sent it to the wrong address? I’d just hate to think that this four-year-long muckraking quest for more documentation of the President’s place of birth was all just a cynical race-baiting ploy or something.

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate