Justin's Political Corner
Like the monster at the end of a horror movie, birtherism refuses to stay down, no matter how many times it’s left for dead. It has been over a year since the White House tried to shove a long-form stake through the heart of the conspiracy, and yet some Republican politicians continue to offer fodder for the fringe which refuses to accept that Barack Obama is the legitimate President of the United States.
TPM’s Nick Martin has been closely following Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett’s recent adventures in birther-mongering. Bennett, the man in charge of running Arizona’s elections, threatened last week to keep Obama off the state’s ballots in November. Bennett’s shenanigans followed the lead of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who earlier this year announced that members of a special posse had determined that a copy of Obama’s birth certificate released last year by the White House was a fraud. (Arpaio saw Bennett’s move this week and raised him an absurdity by dispatching a deputy from his “threats unit” to Hawaii as part of his probe.)
But birtherism is hardly an Arizona-only phenomenon. Signs of life from the birther hive have also recently been reported in Iowa, Colorado, Missouri, North Carolina, and Florida. (It is also worth noting, as TPM reported last week, that some of the most hardcore birthers are now so far gone that they’re saying Obama was born in America after all, only now they think his Kenyan father was a cover for his “real” father, communist Frank Marshall Davis..)
Just this week, TheIowaRepublican.com and other outlets acquired a draft of the proposed platform Iowa Republicans will adopt at their state convention on June 16. The document contained the following line: “We believe candidates for President of the United States must show proof of being a ‘natural born citizen’ as required by Article II, Section I of the Constitution — beginning with the 2012 election.” In an interview with Radio Iowa on Monday, Don Racheter, chairman of the Iowa GOP’s 2012 platform committee, said the section was “a shot” at the president.
Jim Pendergraph, who on July 17 will face fellow Republican Robert Pittenger in a Republican primary runoff for the state’s 9th District House seat, last month had Arpaio join for a campaign event, and said the following, when asked about Obama’s birth certificate.
Earlier in April, Republican Richard Hudson, now facing a primary run off in North Carolina’s 8th District, raised his own questions about Obama’s citizenship at a Tea Party forum.
On May 12, at a fundraiser in Elbert County, Colorado, Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO) told a crowd that he didn’t know if Barack Obama was born in the United States of America.
“I don’t know that,” he said. “But I do know this, that in his heart, he’s not an American. He’s just not an American.”
In April, Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-MO) told constituents at a town hall event that she had doubts about Obama’s birth certificate.
“You know, I have a lot of doubts about all that. But I don’t know, I haven’t seen it,” Hartzler said when asked about the issue, according to The Huffington Post. “I’m just at the same place you are on that. You read this, you read that. But I don’t understand why he didn’t show that right away. I mean, if someone asked for my birth certificate, I’d get my baby book and hand it out and say ‘Here it is,’ so I don’t know.”
After the event, The Sedalia Democrat asked Hartzler to clarify her comments, and the Congresswoman responded: “I have doubts that it is really his real birth certificate, and I think a lot of Americans do, but they claim it is, so we are just going to go with that.”
She declined to say whether she believes the president is a U.S. citizen, calling the issue “irrelevant.”
Back in February, Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) offered perhaps the best example of how this undead issue survives even after it’s been debunked time and again.
h/t: Eric Lach at TPM
The man in charge of running Arizona’s elections has gone to the birthers. Secretary of State Ken Bennett now says he’s not convinced Barack Obama was really born in the United States and so he is threatening to keep the president off the ballot in November.
Bennett’s comments came in an interview late Thursday with conservative radio talk show host Mike Broomhead on Phoenix station KFYI.
Bennett said he was following the lead of the state’s eccentric Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a fellow Republican who ordered an investigation into the president’s birth certificate last year and concluded the document released by the White House is a forgery. Bennett said he is now trying to get verification from state officials in Hawaii that the certificate is authentic.
In doing so, Bennett caved to a fringe group of activists and writers who believe in a conspiracy theory that just never seems to die no matter how much proof they get. Hawaiian officials have said time and again that Obama was born there in 1961, yet the theory persists.
Bennett, the state’s No. 2 elected official just below Gov. Jan Brewer (R), said his investigation isn’t personal. He said the reason he started looking into it is because he got more than 1,200 emails asking him to do so after Arpaio’s investigation came out.
“I’m not a birther. I believe the president was born in Hawaii — or at least I hope he was,” Bennett said on the show. “But my responsibility as secretary of state is to make sure the ballots in Arizona are correct and that those people whose names are on the ballot have met the qualifications for the office they are seeking.”
