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Outside the Beltway

Michele Bachmann Panders To The Birthers

Doug Mataconis
17

Considering the source, this isn’t really surprising:

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) said Thursday it’s not for her to say whether President Obama is a citizen of the United States — or a Christian.

“That isn’t for me to state; that’s for the president to state,” Bachmann, the leading Tea Party lawmaker in the House, said on “Good Morning America” on ABC. “When the president makes his statements, I think they should stand for their own.”

At issue is the lingering belief, among so-called birthers, that Obama was born outside the U.S., which would make him constitutionally ineligible to serve as president. (The state of Hawaii has produced a birth certificate showing Obama was born there.) Some also inaccurately believe that Obama practices Islam, rather than the Christian faith he routinely claims.

“We should take the president at his word,” Bachmann said.

But like John Boehner and others, Bachmann refuses to stand up and tell the birthers that they’re nuts.

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17 responses to “Michele Bachmann Panders To The Birthers”

  1. Lori Avatar
    Lori

    You should read Jack Cashill’s book “Deconstructing Obama.” And to be fair, perhaps Ms. Bachmann should too. I think it really puts to rest the issue. OBozo was either born in Hawaii or Washington State. That’s the conclusion I came to after reading the book. The whole “Birther” thing is a Straw Man. The real issue is nobody knows who POTUS’s biological father is. But odds are pretty high that his father is Frank Marshall Davis.

  2. EddieInCA Avatar
    EddieInCA

    Lori –

    Jack Cashill? Really? That’s your source? The guy who writes: “Did Obama write the books accredited to him, and is the story they tell true. The answer to both, not surprisingly, is NO.” That’s the guy you’re using as a source.

    OBozo? What are you, four?

    Lastly, why is it an issue at all who is Obama’s biological father? That has no bearing on the man, his presidency, nor his legitimacy.

    People like you keep tossing out attacks as a way of de-legitimatizing the man, and, therefore, his policies – regardless of the merit of the policies. It’s not enough for him to be just “wrong on the issues”. No. He has to be un-American and evil.

  3. Neo Avatar
    Neo

    BS .. the “Birther” problem is Barack Obama’s to solve. He can end this nonsense any day he wants (assuming that Governor of Hawaii Neil Abercrombie can find his long-form birth certificate).

  4. matt b Avatar
    matt b

    Neo,

    Quite frankly he ended it with the release of the short form certificate. Period. That was what was required for the office. That was what was done. And if he was to release the “original” that wouldn’t solve anything as it can as easily be faked.

    Again, if he was white, didn’t have a foreign name, wasn’t a liberal, and we were not post-9/11 and in the midst of a fundamental restructure of the middle class, then none of this would be happening.

    Oh and before, you say that saying its impossible to disprove the claim that the Birther Movement is based in a collective racial/islamic/other fear because you can’t possible disprove my belief, realize that in doing so, you’ve made my point first point for me.

  5. Pug Avatar
    Pug

    But odds are pretty high that his father is Frank Marshall Davis.

    His birth certificate says his father is Barack Hussein Obama. Pretty much settles it for me. Or were they conspiring already in 1961, Lori?

    I’d actually be a more interested in hearing more about Michelle Bachmann’s receiving farm subsidies.

    Neo, anybody ever ask you for your long form birth cerificate? Red herring.

  6. JW Avatar
    JW

    Why are folks on good morning america asking her this question? How is her answer inappropriate?

  7. Neo Avatar
    Neo

    matt b: not matter, it’s still Obama’s “Birther” problem

  8. An Interested Party Avatar
    An Interested Party

    “…it’s still Obama’s “Birther” problem”

    And yet, it certainly isn’t hurting him, but, rather, the people who are making the ridiculous charges…

  9. narciso Avatar
    narciso

    Always faithfully echoing the Journolist line, maybe Rove thinks he should be frogmarched after all

  10. MichaelW Avatar
    MichaelW

    Bachmann was asked about Obama’s religion, not where he was born, to which she answered:

    “That isn’t for me to state; that’s for the president to state,” Bachmann, the leading Tea Party lawmaker in the House, said on “Good Morning America” on ABC. “When the president makes his statements, I think they should stand for their own.”

    What exactly is the issue with this? And why is it somehow turned into “pandering to birthers” when it’s got nothing to do with where Obama was born?

    This is an issue manufactured by the liberal media and nothing more.

  11. Neo Avatar
    Neo

    We’ve said repeatedly that we don’t want to relitigate the battles of the past

  12. Matt B Avatar
    Matt B

    @An Interest Party FTW
    And yet, it certainly isn’t hurting him, but, rather, the people who are making the ridiculous charges…

    Bingo. Obama doesn’t have a “birther” problem. The GOP does. And while party bases often decide local elections, the closer you get to the National the more those crazy “independents who think that birthers are crazy” come into play. Seeing how well that helped McCain in 2008, I’m sure that it will be just the thing that leads the Right to victory in 2012.

  13. Pug Avatar
    Pug

    This is an issue manufactured by the liberal media and nothing more.

    Well, of course it is. Anything you might not like is manufactured by the liberal media.

    Like Frank Luntz and his Iowa focus group on the Sean Hannity show, for example. Forty percent of that group of likely GOP caucus goers thought Obama is a Muslim. But that was manufactured by the liberal media.

  14. MichaelW Avatar
    MichaelW

    Well, of course it is. Anything you might not like is manufactured by the liberal media.

    Way to entirely avoid the question. What has any of it got to do with birthers? And what exactly was wrong with Bachmann’s statement?

  15. jwest Avatar
    jwest

    I thought the idea that Obama wrote his own books had been debunked years ago.

    Are some people still clinging to that myth?

  16. A Nonny Moose Avatar
    A Nonny Moose

    Seems as though every time Bam Bam gets into territory where he is overmatched (like, the budget), his allies in the Make Believe Media and leftist bloggers like Doug trot this back out to distract people.

  17. Matt B Avatar
    Matt B

    I thought the idea that Obama wrote his own books had been debunked years ago.
    And this is why birthers, 9/11 truthers, global warming deniers, Holocaust deniers, Kerry lost due to voting machine hacking will never be satisfied. This isn’t about fact in any sort of rational sense.

    It’s about finding the facts that make ones own case and actively ignoring everything else. Lack of accuracy, flaws in logic, critiques by qualified peers, explicit and implicit ideologies, framing context, etc all is made pure by the sheer agreement of those facts to one’s deeply held, subjective beliefs. This is why science cannot escape being political/icized, why shootings must (or must not) have their roots in political action. And why the other side is always out to get you.

    And why the existence of an actual birth certificate never really mattered.

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