Sarah Palin Backs Away From Being a Birther

Sarah Palin sounded like a Birther in an interview with Rusty Humphries. Ben Smith reports:

The conservative talker Rusty Humphries today, Sarah Palin left the door open to speculation about President Obama’s birth certificate.

“Would you make the birth certificate an issue if you ran?” she was asked (around 9 minutes into the video above).

“I think the public rightfully is still making it an issue. I don’t have a problem with that. I don’t know if I would have to bother to make it an issue, because I think that members of the electorate still want answers,” she replied.

“Do you think it’s a fair question to be looking at?” Humphries persisted.

“I think it’s a fair question, just like I think past association and past voting records — all of that is fair game,” Palin said. “The McCain-Palin campaign didn’t do a good enough job in that area.”

McCain’s campaign counsel has said the campaign did look into the birth certificate question and, like every other serious examination, dismissed it.

She did back away from this a little on Facebook:

Stupid Conspiracies

Voters have every right to ask candidates for information if they so choose. I’ve pointed out that it was seemingly fair game during the 2008 election for many on the left to badger my doctor and lawyer for proof that Trig is in fact my child. Conspiracy-minded reporters and voters had a right to ask… which they have repeatedly. But at no point – not during the campaign, and not during recent interviews – have I asked the president to produce his birth certificate or suggested that he was not born in the United States.

She does seem to want to avoid being lumped with the Birthers but she would maintain more credibility if she also pointed out that there is no substance to this conspiracy theory. Maybe that is what she means by using the title Stupid Conspiracies.

The comparison to Trig is a poor response. Palin has protested many times about questions of this nature. The politics of personal destruction was one of the reasons she gave for resigning as governor of Alaska. She would be far more consistent if she had taken a stronger line against both the Trig questions and the Birther questions, dismissing both lines of questioning as she typically dismisses the questions about Trig.

Incidentally, it was conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan, not “many on the left,” who were badgering people for answers about Trig. I would also note that, while I am personally not terribly concerned if Palin might have taken a daughter’s child to avoid a personal family scandal, documentation of Obama’s birth in the United States has been released in contrast to the documentation about Trig.

5 Comments

  1. 1
    Eclectic Radical says:

    ‘Incidentally, it was conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan, not “many on the left,” who were badgering people for answers about Trig.’
     
    It’s worth noting that since early in the primary period, when Sullivan said on Bill Maher’s show that he was for Obama rather than any of the Republican candidates and began to write pro-Obama stuff with the purpose of convincing Republicans how ‘conservative’ Obama was and why they should vote for him, a lot of right-wing bloggers have been treating him like ‘the left’ and including him in statements about ‘the left.’
     
    It’s stupid, but what can one expect?
     

  2. 2
    Ron Chusid says:

    True, to Palin this attack from Sullivan was probably seen as coming from the left. Plus there were some isolated people on the left who picked this up–but it was trivial compared to the noise Sullivan made about this and trivial compared to the Birthers on the right.

  3. 3
    Bob says:

    Is she or isn't she a birther? Only Sarah Palin know for sure LOL http://bit.ly/8KAios #obama

  4. 4
    Bob says:

    Sarah Palin Backs Away From Being a Birther http://bit.ly/8KAios #obama

  5. 5
    Preston says:

    So maybe the Brit, Neil Sankey can succeed where the Russian immigrant (from the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic) has failed, bring it on.

    Poor little Birthers (still in denial about their losses), Judge Land and now judge Carter, smack down the crazies (case dismissed).

    Not even “Fake News” Bill O’Reilly believes the crazies, how funny.

    http://belowthebeltway.com/2009/10/29/bill-oreilly-slams-orly-taitz/
    http://tesibria.typepad.com/whats_your_evidence/BIRTHER%20CASE%20LIST.pdf

    To all the birthers in La, La Land, it is on you to prove to all of us that your assertion is true (TOUGH WHEN YOU KEEP LOSING CASES), if there are people who were there and support your position then show us the video (everyone has a price), either put up or frankly shut-up. I heard Orly Taitz, is selling a tape (I think it’s called “Money, Lies and Video tape”). She is from Orange County, CA, now I know what the mean when they say “behind the Orange Curtain”, when they talk about Orange County, the captial of Conspiracy Theories. You know Obama has a passport, he travel abroad before he was a Senator, but I guess they were in on it.

    In my opinion the Republican Party has been taken over the most extreme religious right (people who love to push their beliefs on others while trying to take away the rights of those they just hate) and that’s who they need to extract from their party if they real want to win. Good Luck, because as they said in WACO, “We Ain’t Coming Out”.

    I heard that she now wants to investigate the “Republican 2009 Summer of Love” list: Assemblyman, Michael D. Duvall (CA), Senator John Ensign (NV), Senator Paul Stanley (TN), Governor Mark Stanford (SC), Board of Ed Chair, and Kristin Maguire AKA Bridget Keeney (SC). She wants to re-establish a family values party.

    I can only hope that Taitz will resist the state collectors that will be coming to collect the $20K.

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