According to an article...

...in Reuters:

President Barack Obama said on Wednesday he had "no regrets" about taking a controversial position on whether a Muslim community center and mosque is built near the site of the September 11 attacks in New York.

Obama, a Democrat, said last week he supported the right of Muslims to build the center near the site known as "Ground Zero."

And in the Times this morning:

...a new poll by the Pew Research Center finds a substantial rise in the percentage of Americans who believe, incorrectly, that Mr. Obama is Muslim. The president is Christian, but 18 percent now believe he is Muslim, up from 12 percent when he ran for the presidency and 11 percent after he was inaugurated.

And then there's that whole birther thing:

...a CNN poll released this month when the president turned 49 found that 27 percent of Americans doubted he was born in the United States. A New York Times/ CBS News poll in April put the figure at 20 percent.
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...Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, said aides did work hard to push back against misinformation...

Or do they?

Dick Armey (above), who could be considered the leader of the Tea Party movement, was on CNBC this morning. He said that the number one issue for the tea partiers was TARP -- you know, the program that almost all mainstream economists agree was necessary to save the financial system from Armageddon? Then he started rambling on about Sarah Palin and Ayn Rand and all I could do was turn the channel to Bloomberg. What a kook!

And that's my point. Maybe Obama spoke out on the Ground Zero mosque for the same reason that the White House might not be altogether unhappy with all this looney birther and Obama-is-a-Muslim nonsense: it makes the Republicans look crazy. Maybe the president is just trying to use it as a wedge issue to pry independents away from the GOP. Then if the Republicans nominate someone from the base in 2012, they'll get shellacked.