One Republican at yesterday’s tea party rally in Delaware for Republican Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell told me she hopes that if the GOP takes over Congress, investigating President Obama’s birth certificate will be on the agenda. It was, for me, one last tea party rally before Election Day — and one more instance of birtherism found among supporters of the movement.
The woman wouldn’t give me her whole name (she told me her first name was “Linda”) and she told me she wasn’t from Delaware. But she did say she was an O’Donnell supporter and a “Republican and a conservative” who supports the tea party movement.
Linda’s hope for a Congressional solution to suspicions about Obama’s heritage was not a universal at the rally. Another tea party supporter of O’Donnell’s I spoke to at the Wilmington rally, area local Maureen Harris, didn’t go so far as to say she believes Obama is an American, but she said the issue “is irrelevant” when it comes to her hopes for a Republican-led Congress.
But Linda’s sentiments suggest that at least some of those turning out to put Republicans back in power tomorrow are hoping that lingering questions about Obama’s past first raised on the 2008 campaign trail will become part of the agenda in Washington in 2011.
The birther movement remains alive and well in the tea party, it seems, even as the movement appears poised to help change the balance of power in at least one half of the Capitol building.
[TPM SLIDESHOW: Meet The Tea Party Caucus]
Watch my interview with Linda below. One thing to remember: it was Halloween when we talked, which explains Linda’s witch hat and outfit made from an O’Donnell yard sign.
