Sarah Palin has now endorsed the Birther cause, telling a right-wing radio host that “the public, rightfully, is still making it an issue” — and she even seemed to suggest that that the McCain campaign should have gone there last year.
Radio talker Rusty Humphries gave Palin questions submitted by his listeners, including this one: “Would you make the birth certificate an issue if you ran?”
“Um, I think the public, rightfully, is still making it an issue. I don’t have a problem with that,” said Palin. “I don’t know if I would have to bother to make it an issue, because I think enough members of the electorate still want answers.”
Palin implied that the McCain campaign should have used this issue in 2008, discussing her long-standing complaint that the campaign didn’t go hard enough on Obama: “I think it’s a fair question, just like I think past associations, past voting records, all of that is fair game. You know, I gotta tell you, too, I think our campaign, the McCain-Palin campaign, didn’t do a good enough job in that area.”
Palin has done a pseudo-backtrack in her Facebook account, denying that she in any way called on Obama to produce his birth certificate or suggested he wasn’t born in the United States — which would seem to contradict the plain text of what she said in the interview:
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.
