Summer CE Week #1: “Obama citizenship ‘settled’ for McMorris Rodgers” Aug. 16th
Bad news for “birthers,” those people who think Barack Obama isn’t legally president because he wasn’t born in the United States: Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers isn’t on your side.
Birthers may have briefly harbored hope – and people who think the whole idea is crazy may have arched an eyebrow – about two weeks ago when the Eastern Washington Republican gave a wishy-washy answer to a blogger from the Huffington Post while hurrying up the Capitol steps.
Asked if she thought Obama was a natural-born citizen, constitutionally permitted to be president, she replied: “We’re all going to find out.”
Asked what she believed personally, she said: “Oh, I’d like to see the documents.”
The video was up on YouTube, and many other Web sites, including the one for this column. It features other House Republicans giving ambiguous answers to questions of Obama’s citizenship qualifications, too, but McMorris Rodgers is second in the clip.
The birther issue came to the Inland Northwest last spring, when Chief Justice John Roberts was asked about a court case regarding Obama’s birth certificate during a visit to the University of Idaho. The questioner was Orly Taitz, a dentist and lawyer from California, who asked Roberts about papers she had filed months earlier.
Some people in the movement regard Taitz as a cross between Paul Revere and Joan of Arc. Some outside the movement regard her as bonkers. Spin Control will only say that she can talk very fast, long and passionately about the whole thing, so don’t call her if you’re pressed for time.
The controversy thrived for months on the Internet, but most news outlets ignored it until recently. In July, however, it hit big on the 24-hour cable news shows, which apparently had time to fill in the summer doldrums.
McMorris Rodgers is back in the district during the summer recess and held her first public events Wednesday in Colville – where, it should be noted, no one in the audiences asked her about Obama’s citizenship. But between town hall appearances, we did.
Spin Control: Do you have any doubts that Barack Obama is a citizen of the United States and constitutionally entitled to be president?
McMorris Rodgers: I have looked into it further. There’s a reality that it’s been in the courts, the courts have ruled that he is indeed a legal citizen, born in the country, and I think it’s a nonissue.
SC: Should Congress take up the issue?
McM R: No. Absolutely not. The people elected him president, the courts have looked at the issue. It’s settled. We need to move on.
When she told the Huffington Post “we’re going to find out,” she added, she meant she was trying to get some information herself, not that Congress needed to look into it. She hasn’t seen the pictures of Obama’s certification of live birth on the Internet – which birthers say doesn’t prove anything, anyway – but she does know his birth was reported in the Honolulu newspapers back in 1961 and thinks it’s legitimate.
And she’s received “quite a bit” of blowback from constituents over her appearance on the Huffington Post video.
She isn’t signing on to what some call a “birther bill,” which requires all presidential candidates to produce a birth certificate to prove they are natural-born citizens.
H.R. 1503, drafted by Rep. Bill Posey, R-Fla., isn’t going anywhere, anyway, as it has 10 Republican co-sponsors in a Democrat-controlled House. Because, after all, the fix is in and Democrats don’t want their president knocked out of office by anything that could, you know, expose the truth.
Spin Control is a weekly political column that also appears online with daily posts, videos and reader comments at www. spokesman.com/blogs/ spincontrol. See the McMorris Rodgers video and hear audio from her Colville interview on the blog.
At this point isn’t it moot to search Obama’s birth records being that he is our President already. I now know that many people believe what they want and nobody knows the truth about Obama’s birth place. Depending on your opinion of Obama depends on what side of the argument you are on. The main reason that this is coming up now is because there is a need for some conflict to come up because our nation feeds on gossip. I want to know why people waited so long before bringing to light such questions as birth place, the election was over a few months ago why not just leave it to the president to run the country and believe in the leader that he was born in the U.S.
There has been a lot of speculation on whether or not Obama was born in the United States. Personally, I think Obama should never have become president. He won’t show his original birth certificate. I’m not saying that he should be taken out of office, because then Biden would be president, and that would be even worse. I think they should have a re-election, but that’s probably not going to happen. I think congress should have made sure that he was born here before he ran for president.
In the article it talks about how we shouldn’t look into this issue because he’s already president, but in the constitution, it says that to be president one has to be born in America. Some people think we should look into this issue and others think we shouldn’t because it’s not an issue.
I want to know if Obama was actually born in America or not and why didn’t they cover this issue until after he became president.
Jessica, I really think that it’s simply the fact that people are looking for something to cause drama. I’m in no way an expert on the issue, but from what I’ve heard it’s just an attempt to find some bad thing about Obama.
To Kylei Tompkins:
The Constitution states that our President must be a natural born citizen but doesn’t that also mean that if his parents were both US citizens and Obama was born out of the US that he is still a natural born citizen, correct? I don’t think this topic should really be considered saying as how Obama is already our President and nobody bothered to say anything beforehand. So to me this all seems like people looking for something to discredit him.
I completely agree with Jessica on this. There is no point at all. I swear just because he is African American people want to find some way to get him out of office. The truth is that it’s too late. If it was really that big of deal they would have done something about it before he was elected to be President. Also when you think about it like why would Obama lie about something like that? If he actually wasn’t born here I’m sure someone would have already proven it. It is sort of a hard thing to hide when everyone is so into your life. I doubt Obama would do something that stupid because he would have had to know someone would find out, and then he would just look completely ridiculous.
All that I have to say about this is that I once played a gig at Cathy McMorris Roger’s birthday party. Now I’m in a picture with her, and I was wearing a “give peace a chance” shirt. Oh, the irony.
Ok really right now? I find this slightly ridiculous. With all the problems in the world and all the things that we look to our goverment officials to fix, they are worrying about whether our president was actually born in the United States? Seriously….wow America. All I’m saying is the Obama is already President, already was elected and is already chillin in the white house. If we were really that worried about him being an American perhaps we should have thought of that a little earlier, say before he was elected to office?
I know that I don’t really agree with Obama’s goals and views, so I didn’t support him before I heard about this, but after I heard that he might not be a natural born citizen and that he had a dual citizenship (which i thought wasn’t allowed if you wanted to be president), I felt like there was hope. I know that his campaign was all about hope and change and all that stuff, and what he said didn’t give me hope. It made me feel fear whenever I thought about what my future might look like compared to what I have envisioned it looking like. I don’t want the government to control what I do. I don’t want to live in a socialist country, if I did, I would move. What I’m trying to say is that I am against Obama, not because of his race or skin color, I’m against his views and the thought that maybe he wasn’t eligible for the presidency gave me a glimmer of hope. But he’s president and all that i can do about it is start voting for what I think is right when I turn 18.
questions: if this is not that big of a deal, why was it discussed so much?
did anyone else experience the hope that i did when they heard about it?
Well I did already know about Cathy McMorris Rodgers’s comments on Obama’s citizenship but, just the fact of not the story of it. I thought the article about this was unneeded, dramatic press making a story out of anything they can sink their teeth into. My questions would have to be, Why does it matter that McMorris Rodgers comment made a difference out of all the other people, let alone government officials, what made hers special or different? Also, why did none of the reporters or audience members ask her about this comment during her public event in Colville, if it’s such a big deal?
To Kylie, again. The issue was covered back in November 2008, the citizenship was asked to be proven of both presidential candidates. And which, Obama was born to an American citizen. In Hawaii. That is a matter of record. According to two researched articles I found.
To Elise- Well yeah, if it was such a big deal, why didn`t any one ask about it? I think People at the time probably already had their opinion of what they think (or what they think they know) of Obama. I think that “Spin Control” asked the question to McMorris to help fill this artice. But there is no definite answer to you question (at least not from me).