Michele Bachmann’s multi-state campaign announcement tour took her to South Carolina on Tuesday, home of some of the most right-wing Tea Partiers around. And interestingly, while she was there she made a comment that distanced herself sharply from the fringe “Birther” movement in a subtle way.
As CNN reports, Bachmann promised to run a fully national campaign. “We want to win Hawaii,” she said. “And we think that there is a certain Hawaiian president who should go back to Hawaii!”
Of course, President Obama was born in Hawaii, though he made his adult life and his political career in Chicago, Illinois. Moreover, Hawaii is a heavily Democratic state, and has only voted Republican for president in the landslide re-elections of Richard Nixon in 1972 and Ronald Reagan in 1984. Obama won his birthplace state by a whopping 72%-26% margin in 2008 — up from John Kerry’s much narrower 54%-45% in 2004 — aided by the prospect of electing the first Hawaiian president.
On the other hand, this hasn’t stopped conspiracy theorists from spinning rumors that Obama was really born in Kenya, and isn’t legally qualified to be president, and that the multiple Hawaiian documents attesting to his birth there are forgeries.
For her part, Bachmann has never endorsed birtherism — though she did once upon a time occasionally give non-committal answers when asked about it, and is supported in Iowa by a state senator who has introduced a “birther bill” to require birth certificates from presidential candidates.
In April, when George Stephanopoulos produced copies of Obama’s birth certificate documents during an interview with Bachmann — following a non-committal answer on the subject — she replied, “That’s what should settle it. I take the president at his word and I think — again I would have no problem and apparently the president wouldn’t, either. Introduce that, we’re done. Move on, end of story.”
