Freshman Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL) has told the Orlando Sentinel just how he felt about the negative reaction he experienced to a bill he introduced: A bill to require presidential candidates to submit birth certificates to the federal government.
“I expected there would be some civil debate about it, but it wasn’t civil,” Posey said. “Just a bunch of name-calling and personal denigration … There is no reason to say that I’m the illegitimate grandson of an alligator.”
When he first introduced his bill — which to date has not picked up even one cosponsor — Posey said it was about dispelling from the get-go in future campaigns the sort of rumors that were spread about President Obama, and was not aimed at denigrating the president. However, the Sentinel does point out that while Posey now says he has “no reason to question” Obama’s citizenship, he did tell them at the beginning of this controversy that he wouldn’t “swear on a stack of Bibles whether he is or isn’t” an American.
