It's not about race, though . . .

A majority of Republicans polled believe that Obama sympathizes with those who would impose Sharia law.  No, seriously:

No matter what President Obama says about his religion, the debate over whether he is secretly Muslim continues to rage within the GOP. And a new poll finds that Republicans are now taking that rumor one step further. A Newsweek survey released Monday found that a majority of Republicans believe that Obama “sympathizes with the goals of Islamic fundamentalists who want to impose Islamic law around the world.”

According to the poll, 14 percent of Republicans said that from what they knew of Obama, they thought such allegations were “definitely true”; 38 percent thought the allegations were “probably true.” Meanwhile, 33 percent of Republicans thought they were “probably not true” and 7 percent thought they were “definitely not true.” Asked whether Obama favors the interests of Muslim Americans over other groups of Americans, 59 percent Republicans said yes, whereas 34 percent said he has “generally been evenhanded.”

Yes, this is the same Obama who is currently trying to destroy the Taliban — you know, those guys who imposed Sharia law on Afghanistan? — with such vigor that dead children and bombed wedding parties are acceptable collateral damage.

This kind of rightwing nuttiness is nothing new, of course.  Folks in the John Birch Society were sure that Eisenhower was actually a commie dupe, for example.  But those people were on the ideological fringe of the party.  They were a cadre of activists, not the majority.  The mainstream of today’s Republican Party is made up of the political descendants of those lunatic Birchers.  Not just the sad, embittered jerks who listen to Bauerle and Beck, but your everyday average Republican.

The majority.