SMELLS LIKE TAITZ SPIRIT

Because we have a diseased political culture, this is probably enough to inoculate J.D. Hayworth against charges that he's a crazy conspiratorialist, while still permitting him to tap into the energy and votes of crazy conspiratorialists:

Hayworth: Birtherism is an 'identity theft' issue.

Last month former GOP congressman J.D. Hayworth, who is challenging Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) in the Arizona Republican primary for U.S. Senate, saddled up with the far right "birthers" ... "Well, gosh, we all had to bring our birth certificates" in order "to play football," he said, adding that "the President should come forward with the information, that's all." [Monday] night on CNN, when host Campbell Brown asked if he really believes Obama is foreign-born, Hayworth dodged but later explained his comments from last month as raising from "identity theft" issues:

HAYWORTH: ...For example, in Scottsdale, we had a situation where we had somebody running for the council under an assumed name who was a fugitive from justice. All I'm saying is, for every race across the country, especially with identity theft in the news, it would be great that people can confirm who they say they are....

On the other hand, if there were a Democratic noise machine similar to the one operated by the GOP, it might now be possible to make Hayworth appear even crazier than he is, because identity theft is the focus of one of the pet conspiracies of uber-birther and barking lunatic Orly Taitz:

Taitz spoke to a crowd of about 40 at a hotel here this afternoon, and in a little over an hour threw a kitchen sink's worth of accusations at the president.

To wit: Obama has failed to produce a true copy of his Hawaii birth certificate; the birth documentation he has produced may be a forgery; Obama may have forged his selective service documents; he may have as many as 25 social security numbers; one of those numbers may have originated in Connecticut and indicates he's over 100 years old; he may have enrolled at Occidental College as a foreign exchange student; he may be guilty of wire fraud, social security fraud, mail fraud and other unspecified fraudulent acts....

If we had a left-wing Murdoch and every secular AM station in America were wall-to-wall left-wing talk, Taitz, of course, would be a household name, every American's idea of a tinfoil-hat-wearing crazy, rather than just a figure of fun in a small circle of lefty blog readers.

And if such a media world existed, Hayworth's remark and Taitz's would be interwoven in multiple stories across all media -- even far away from Arizona, just an example of how crazy those crazy Republican crazies are, one more reason why right-thinking Americans must never, ever allow these peopleto regain power.