He tries to walk the fine line between going full birther and not completely dismissing the movement. We've seen this so many times before. I believe O'Reilly once said something like: "I don't know if Obama is an American, I'll have to take his word for it". The choice of words is not by accident.

Is this because they have a black guy who acts white polling well?

what does acting white mean?

on the blackness scale CAIN>>>OBAMA

I don't think he acts white at all. I think he's much "blacker" than Obama. Now, that statement is silly, but I'm talking in terms of my own perceptions.

Obama, in almost every sense of the term, doesn't act "black". The only time I ever even seen him talk/act "black" was when he was addressing the black caucus and changed his voice.

Cain portrays a stereotypical southern-baptist-black-guy with his renditions of "amazing grace" during rallies.

Am I off base here? Racist ban?

lol fly, perry didn't go birther.

well, he certainly didn't go "sane person" either

lol yes he did.

Sounds sane to me.

Oh and fly, this is why you don't copy/paste crap from thinkprogress without, you know, thinking.

What are you talking about?

I'll bold the LOL portions of what he said.

-Governor, do you believe that President Barack Obama was born in the United States?
-I have no reason to think otherwise.
-That’s not a definitive, “Yes, I believe he”
-Well, I don’t have a definitive answer, because he’s never seen my birth certificate
-But you’ve seen his.
-I don’t know. Have I?
-You don’t believe what’s been released?[/B]
-I don’t know. I had dinner with Donald Trump the other night.
-And?
-That came up.
-And he said?
-He doesn’t think it’s real.
-And you said?
-I don’t have any idea. It doesn’t matter. He’s the President of the United States. He’s elected. It’s a distractive issue.

.....

So, to recap: Perry first makes a non-sequitor about not knowing if Obama's birth certificate is real because Obama had not seen his, then questions the certificate that has been released evidently in deference to Trump and ultimately acknowledges that it doesn't matter.

Acting white is one of the criticisms of Cain from other black people. Its not about presentation, its substance. Cain and his father avoided the civil rights movement (the keep your head down and blend in story offended a lot of people), he is a Republican, he wants to tax the rich less, doesnt support grassroots movements aimed to help blacks, talks about how the unemployed have themselves to blame (keep in mind nearly half of all black youths in America are unemployed right now and over 16% of all black people are UE'd), he carried water for Perry having the ******head ranch, is a millionaire and he said all black people who support the Dems are brainwashed.

While Cain is blacker than Obama by most metrics he is less connected to the average black man and is perceived as acting white. Even down to the name Herman, its just a white guy's name, whereas Barack is very strongly African.

Soon the loumike gang will say im the racist for thinking it matters, and to me it doesnt as i dont care, yet to black people in America its clear that it does and that Cain isnt connecting to them.

Charlie Strong agrees.

ikes, you gotta understand, outside of the world of birthers he did. I mean, he's not all the way to Orly Taitz, but he crossed over the event horizon. I know that's not how you see it because either

A) You can nit up that he's just expressing the metaphysical uncertainty caused by the limits of human perception

B) You also think that the long form might be fake like Trump does

but you guys need to understand that to the rest of the world, the only correct answer to the question "Governor, do you believe that President Barack Obama was born in the United States?" is "Yes."


I do enjoy that casey is trying to paint this as "gotcha journalism" from freaking Parade magazine. Notorious liberal rag, Parade.

One black man's thoughts on why Cain, despite "acting blacker" isn't really acting all that black, and why it doesn't appeal to black voters:

lol, loved this one

real racists revealed itt

Attributing behaviors as being "white" or "black" behaviors is extremely racist.

Next up: panel discussion of why Bill Clinton is sometimes called our "first black president."

I think you have some valid opinions here. I mean, were Hilary in the WH, we'd be having the discussion on if the Rs were really sexist.

They just hate anyone with a D in front of their name. I think maybe Rs just equally have ambivalence towards anyone who isn't rich, and that that group includes many a black person may just be incidental to a degree. That their policies don't aim to help black people may just be an unintended consequence, but it also leads very few black people to want to join the R party, so it's easy to view them as exclusionary. (also, attacks on the civil rights movement, lo over a half decade later, don't help them appear any less racist)

LOL it must be fun to completely imagine what you want into what someone says. When perry says it's a complete nonissue and he has no reason to not believe Obama it's not birtherism. And that's really all there is to say about that.

And let's not pretend you didn't get this from thinkprogress.

If you have a good memory on this board, you'd remember how racist Democrats were in the primaries.

Well, it's not like Pat Buchannan just wrote a book lamenting how white people were losing their power in this country and that the GOP needs to stoke white fear and cling to power desperately that way for as long as they can.

ikes getting all indignant again

LOL JOKES ON YOU, I got it from Salon.
It's really all over the internets, though, there's even a bit on The Corner sincerely complaining about Parade's gotcha questions:
A brief perusal of the comments on right wing blog entries about that interview:
Read more: http://nation.foxnews.com/rick-perry...#ixzz1bjDZSMIA

So me and this actual birther are both pretty clear that Perry was being a birther in that interview. ikes could you do us a favor and explain how it isn't?