Romney's Birth Certificate Joke Becomes a "Thing"

And people wonder why he acts like a robot.

Well, at least the political press won't be talking about Todd Akin during the weekend leading into the Republican National Convention. Mitt Romney today, showing off his less-than-world-class sense of humor: "No one's ever asked to see my birth certificate."

Just approaching this from the point of view of campaign strategy: Yikes! This can't possibly be any good for him. I mean, where to start? First of all, it's certain to put the Romney campaign on the defensive over the weekend. The national press is pretty clear that birther nonsense is out of bounds; make up stuff about welfare and you'll get burned by MSNBC hosts, the liberal blogosphere and the fact-checkers, which have a combined audience of approximately zero undecided voters — but make birther jokes, and you're going to get the (negative) attention of the national press.