He might not officially be a birther, but Mitt Romney knows how to play into that crowd's conspiracies, as he showed at a rally in Michigan on Friday. Romney, standing alongside his wife Ann at campaign stop in Commerce, joked: "No one asked to see my birth certificate. They know this is the place that we were born and raised."

Actually, somebody did ask to see Romney's birth certificate. Remember back in May when the candidate released it? The release was meant as another of these not-quite-birther-but-kind-of moves, playing on the sympathies of those who doubt President Barack Obama was born in the United States. But at least one prominent Obama birther, Jerome R. Corsi, had previously suggested Romney wasn't a natural born citizen as well. If he even remembers it, Romney didn't seem too worried about his own birther contingent on Friday. His crowd didn't, either, greetig his "joke" with much more full-throated cheering than laughter. His spokespeople quickly walked it back with "Governor Romney was just illustrating that he was born and raised here in Michigan." 

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Adam Martin