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michelle bernard is msnbc's political analyst, and jay newton small is a washington correspondent for "time." thank you for joining us tonight. what do we make about the birthers thing? i have been accused of hitting this too hard. i'm stunned every time i look at these numbers that just came out this morning. they are stunning. most americans give this short shrift, 1 in 10 people think it's for real and they haven't really thought it through, i don't think. but it's so heavily embedded among the republican party, a majority of whom either buy it or think there's something to it, and in the south, and this is very troubling. majority of people are either in the group that buy the fact he wasn't born here in the south or think they're not sure, they say. michelle, i wonder about the h ethnic story here. >> i don't want to pick on people in the south because i don't know if it's southern or just the fact that the republican party right now seems to be a geographic party, but it's embarrassing. i don't understand it. i didn't think it could get any crazier after we had people continuing