[I]t was the next question from a Rogersville man that drew more applause: “What is the procedure for recalling U.S. senators?”

Someone quickly shouted to scattered laughter, “Where’s your birth certificate?” a reference to some Americans’ doubts about President Barack Obama’s birth country.

It was tongue-in-cheek, but wow, the Obama “birther” meme has traveled very far.

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JERICHO: Guys like Papa Blunt make us sick to our stomach. They aren’t conservatives, and they sure don’t reflect moral absolute the way that we expect the Republican Party to stand up. You had the pageboy scandal, you had all of that crap, and nobody stands up to it, and says “This is crap. What are you doing?”

STEELE: But wait a minute.

JERICHO: Not like little boys who are running around with their little toy and can’t behave themselves.

STEELE: Look, don’t… I agree with you. When stuff gets in the crapper, you gotta clean it out.

Since becoming RNC chairman in January, Steele has attempted to keep up the “good cop” role he played as a Republican pundit, criticizing the GOP’s excesses. It’s not easy.

Jason Noble has more, and the Joplin Globe responded to the meeting with an editorial slamming Emery for obsessing over “this work of fiction worthy of a David Baldacci book.” Emery’s response to the whole thing, reported by Messenger:

Whoever is satisfied is satisfied. Whoever is not, is not.

For candidates who are required by the Constitution of the United States to be natural born citizens, the secretary of state shall request an official copy of the candidate’s birth certificate. Other certifications, such as a certificate of live birth, shall not be accepted. Should any candidate fail to provide an official birth certificate within thirty days of the request by the secretary of state, his or her name shall not be placed on the ballot.

For people who’ve followed the Obama conspiracies, that’s pretty specific and telling language. Last summer, Obama made available the Hawai’ian certificate of live birth that states he was born in Honolulu in 1961. But because it’s a new document, not a vintage certificate, it’s sprouted conspiracy theories about whether or not it was forged (it wasn’t) and whether it actually proves that Obama was born abroad (it really doesn’t).

Republicans hold a majority in the Missouri state assembly, but it’s not likely that this will pass.

Perhaps Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, will wise up and spend less time making accusations about Minnesota’s Al Franken and Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), and more time recruiting and ego-stroking strong Senate candidates. It was the GOP’s failure to recruit Senate candidates in 2005 that revealed how weak it would be going into the 2006 midterms.

Right now, Roland Burris aside, it looks like Republicans think 2010 will be another bad year. It’s Cornyn’s job to fight that perception, not run interference for the doomed Norm Coleman.

Bond is one of only two statewide Republican officials, the other being Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder, who is now getting looked over as a possible Senate candidate. Other potential GOP contenders are former Rep. Kenny Hulshof, who lost last year’s gubernatorial election to new Gov. Jay Nixon (D), Rep. Jo Ann Emerson of southeastern Missouri and Rep. Sam Graves of the St. Louis suburbs, who crushed top Democratic recruit Kay Barnes last year.

The leading Democrat has to be Robin Carnahan, the Missouri Secretary of State. A mid-2008 poll showed her tied with Bond in a potential 2010 match-up — any trial heat with the leading Republicans will likely show her ahead. She’ll probably be lobbied to get into the race as vigorously as Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) was lobbied by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) four years ago.

In the sweltering heat, Palin received an enthusiastic greeting from an audience that the campaign said numbered more than 17,000, but was almost certainly considerably smaller. her speech was periodically interrupted by chants of “Sarah, Sarah,” and five audience members held up giant white letters that spelled “PALIN.” For the first time since McCain added her to his ticket, Palin sought to demonstrate that her experience in Alaska prepared her for the reponsibilities of the federal government. As Hurricane Gustav moved steadily toward New Orleans, three years to the week after Hurricane Katrina decimated the city, McCain and Palin paid a quick visit to the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency’s Emergency Operation Center in Jackson, Miss. yesterday, where they met with the governors of all four Gulf Coast states. Palin used this as a jumping off point.

I’d like to add my call also for every person and every family in danger to make a straight path toward safer ground. As governor of Alaska, I recently just signed a disaster declaration myself last month, when the people of the Fairbanks region, they faced the worst rainfall and flooding in decades, and when any governor calls for evacuation, these instructions need to be taken very seriously. To citizens in the Gulf Coast area, your lives and many others are in the balance, and the success of law enforcement, and of emergency workers, and our great National Guard, depends on your cooperation.

Palin’s remarks about the hurricane preparations were boilerplate, but her delivery was relentlessly upbeat. Even as she talked about the impending doom and gloom facing New Orleans, she spun just about everything she said in an optimistic light.

As we’ve seen in other disasters, crisis on this scale can bring out the best in our country. They show the resourcefulness, the resourcefulness of our people shine through, and the heroic kindness of which we are capable. And whatever the scale of destruction, grief, perhaps loss of life that this hurricane might inflict, people in the Gulf, that region will once again be counting on the good heart of America, Americans like all of you. I know that relief workers and charitable groups, and volunteers, they’ll be up to the task. So I join Sen. McCain in urging all of our fellow Americans to stand ready to help in the work and relief effort to rebuild. Some terrible days may lie ahead for New Orleans, again, and the region. But my fellow Americans, we’re going to get through this crisis, as we always do in our finest moments, by pulling together, and by helping where the need is greatest.

Palin’s speaking style is reminiscent of a friend’s impossibly cheery mother. It’s difficult to imagine her as an attack dog. Palin could provide relief from the near-constant negativity coming from the McCain campaign’s ads. In a reversal of the typical roles of running mates, McCain and the rest of his staff will be able to keep doing what they’ve done all along — launching broadsides against Sen. Barack Obama, while Palin can spread rays of sunshine throughout the battleground states where she will likely be spending the bulk of her time. If Palin largely refrains from going negative, it will make it all the more difficult for the Obama campaign to attack her without appearing to be “picking on the nice lady.” Palin can play the good cop, pushing her message of government reform and change to the masses, to the rest of the campaign’s bad cop.