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Why conservatives are obsessed with Obama's college grades: 4 theories - The Week
1. Conservatives want to paint Obama as a dumb, affirmative-action fraud
In his $20,000 offer for Obama's transcripts, Bayne lays out his rationale: "We're not convinced that Barack is as smart as you media elitists keep insisting he is." The charge that the president got bad grades 30 years ago doesn't hold water, however: Biographer David Maraniss says Obama got a 3.7 GPA at Columbia and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law, something you can't do with bad grades.
2. Conservatives are obsessed with "vetting" Obama
The play to shame Obama into releasing his college grades "is nothing more than a pathetically desperate effort to find something, anything that they can use against him in the upcoming election," says Doug Mataconis at Outside the Beltway. It's part of the Right's effort to "vet" Obama, four years after the media made him "one of the most vetted presidential candidates in recent memory."
3. This is just birtherism warmed over
When you "get to the bottom of the conspiracy," says Sarah Jones at Politicus USA, it's clear that Wayne is a birther, and his "foreign exchange student" theory is part of the claim that Obama isn't really American. Indeed, this "irrelevant nonsense about college transcripts... has been a central part of birtherism from the beginning,"
4. The Right is desperate to distract from Romney's taxes
The reason conservatives are "freaking out in unison" about Obama's college grades "couldn't be more obvious," says Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs: They're trying anything they can to "divert attention away from Mitt Romney's refusal to release financial information
1. Conservatives want to paint Obama as a dumb, affirmative-action fraud
In his $20,000 offer for Obama's transcripts, Bayne lays out his rationale: "We're not convinced that Barack is as smart as you media elitists keep insisting he is." The charge that the president got bad grades 30 years ago doesn't hold water, however: Biographer David Maraniss says Obama got a 3.7 GPA at Columbia and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law, something you can't do with bad grades.
2. Conservatives are obsessed with "vetting" Obama
The play to shame Obama into releasing his college grades "is nothing more than a pathetically desperate effort to find something, anything that they can use against him in the upcoming election," says Doug Mataconis at Outside the Beltway. It's part of the Right's effort to "vet" Obama, four years after the media made him "one of the most vetted presidential candidates in recent memory."
3. This is just birtherism warmed over
When you "get to the bottom of the conspiracy," says Sarah Jones at Politicus USA, it's clear that Wayne is a birther, and his "foreign exchange student" theory is part of the claim that Obama isn't really American. Indeed, this "irrelevant nonsense about college transcripts... has been a central part of birtherism from the beginning,"
4. The Right is desperate to distract from Romney's taxes
The reason conservatives are "freaking out in unison" about Obama's college grades "couldn't be more obvious," says Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs: They're trying anything they can to "divert attention away from Mitt Romney's refusal to release financial information
