Embarrassing Arizona again

(PNI) On Monday, Barack Obama was officially re-elected president. Some Arizona Republican leaders used the occasion to show that they still don't understand messaging.

Mitt Romney's 11 Arizona electors gathered to cast their Electoral College votes for the Republican nominee, reflecting the election's results here. If that's all they had done, it would have been a non-story.

But state GOP Chairman Tom Morrissey and two other electors, Don Ascoli and John D. Rhodes, offered their opinion that Obama does not meet the constitutional requirement that the president be native-born.

Amazing.

Sure, this long-discredited conspiracy theory is still bouncing in the fringes. That's where such foolishness belongs. If there were any truth to it, don't you think Hillary Clinton, John McCain or Mitt Romney would have long ago produced the evidence?

Obama was born in Hawaii. End of story.

When the elected leader of the state Republican Party repeats this nonsense at what should be an event as formal and solemn as its prescription in the Constitution, he does his party and his state no favors. He only reaffirms an image that neither should want.

There are times when platitudes -- or silence -- are sufficient.

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