Well, So Much For Trump's Chances of Getting The Republican Nomination (With Update)

Donald Trump wrote this in 2000 (from his book, The America We Deserve):

“We must have universal healthcare. I’m a conservative on most issues but a liberal on this one. We should not hear so many stories of families ruined by healthcare expenses. Doctors might be paid less than they are now, as is the case in Canada, but they would be able to treat more patients because of the reduction in their paperwork."

You're fired, Mother-Fucker.

UPDATE: Karl Rove said this on FoxNews last Friday:

[Trump's] full embrace of the birther issue means that he’s off there in the nutty right and is now an inconsequential candidate. I’m shocked. The guy’s smarter than this. And you know, the idea that President Obama was not born in Hawaii, being — you know, making that the centerpiece of his campaign, means that he’s just a joke candidate. Let him go ahead and announce for election on “The Apprentice.” The American people aren’t going to be hiring him, and certainly, the Republicans are not going to be hiring him in the Republican primary.

Rove also referred to Trump's idea that Obama's parents would arrange birth notices to ensure his presidential eligibility as “full-throated . . . nuttiness.”

I agree with Rove that Trump is now an inconsequential candidate, but it isn't his embrace of the Birthers that made him so -- it's because he was for health care reform before he was against it. Trump's cozying up to the Birthers was actually a good move politically, given that 51% of GOP primary voters believe that Obama was born outside of the United States (21% said they were "not sure" on this issue).

It's one thing to ignore a bunch of lunatics when they only make up a small percentage of the group you are trying to get to vote for you. But when the lunatics actually make up a majority of the electorate you are targeting, you ignore such people at your peril. Mike Huckabee recognizes this as well -- that's why he recently said that Obama grew up in Kenya, then clumsily tried to convince people that he merely misspoke. Huckabee knew that Obama did not grow up in Kenya, but he also knows that such comments play well with the Birther crowd.

And although I believe that Rove also knows the importance of playing to your base, it is clear that he sees the danger of embracing lunacy when it comes to the General Election. Republicans are apparently more than willing to go along with the whole Birtherism thing, partly because it gives them an opportunity to indirectly express their continuing outrage over the fact that a Black man was elected President of the United States. But independents are not interested in such things, and Rove knows that independents will be turned off by this issue during the run-up to the General Election.