Businessman and reality TV star Donald Trump has shot to the top of the Republican presidential field on the strength of a weeks–long campaign to become the Elvis Presley of the Birthers. While The King seems to have enjoyed most of his starmaking Birther interviews, he ran into an interviewer who wouldn’t humor him on Alan Colmes’ radio show Thursday night, and from the sounds of it, would have rather been document-hunting in Hawaii than getting grilled by Colmes.

The Birther strategy has given Trump a high rate of return, on a very small investment. Much like the Southern Strategy, the Birther Strategy succeeds because it energizes a significant portion of the conservative base, but doesn’t really alienate other conservatives, who reflexively ignore or defend its racial underpinnings. In Trump’s case, he’s gone from wealth-redistributing zero to Birther hero, shooting to the top of the New Hampshire polls, trailing only Mitt Romney, simply by ratcheting up the Birther schtick in a series of interviews, until he became a self-styled Tommy Lee

Jones to the birth certificate’s Dr. Richard Kimble.

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On Alan Colmes’ radio show Thursday night, Trump talked about his still-tentative presidential bid, and when Colmes asked him if he was “leaning yes” on a run for president, Trump replied that using the word leaning would be “inappropriate.” Questioning the President’s birthplace, however, is a-ok with Trump, but he grew frustrated with Colmes’ line of questioning, perhaps the first time Trump has wanted to change the subject away from Obama’s birth certificate:
Tags: Alan Colmes, Barack Obama, Birther, Donald Trump, Elvis Presley, Mitt Romney