Palin flirts with Obama birth certificate questions

By Garance Franke-Ruta

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin gave support Thursday to a conspiracy theory promoted by fringe groups, that President Obama may not have an American birth certificate, saying, "I think the public rightfully is still making it an issue."

Palin's comments came in an interview on "The Rusty Humphries Show", a conservative radio program, while promoting her book about the 2008 presidential campaign, "Going Rogue."

"I think it's a fair question, just like I think past associations and past voting records -- all of that is fair game," the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee said when asked if she thought Obama's citizenship was a fair question to examine. Those who ask such questions about the birth certificate have become known as "birthers" and are a persistent and vocal presence in GOP circles, especially within the Tea Party movement that has sprung up over the course of 2009. Palin has agreed to be the keynote speaker at the First National Tea Party Convention at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville Feb. 4-6.

But as news of her comments spread online, Palin seemingly thought the better of her approach and took to Facebook to say that, while she may have said she supports others questioning the president about his citizenship, she herself has not raised such questions.

"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," Palin wrote in a Facebook note posted at 1:16am Eastern time Friday, under the headline "Stupid Conspiracies."

"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," she wrote.

On the Humphries show, Palin said she thought she would not need to raise questions about Obama's citizenship herself, should she seek to challenge him for office in 2012, because others would do so.

"Would you make the birth certificate an issue if you ran?" Humphries asked.

"Um, I think the public rightfully is still making it an issue. I don't have a problem with that. I don't know if I would have to bother to make it an issue, 'cause I think enough members of the electorate still want answers," Palin said.

Questioning Obama's birth certificate would be turnabout as fair play, suggested Palin, because of "that weird conspiracy-theory freaky thing that people talk about, that Trig isn't my real son. And a lot of people, well, 'You need to produce his birth certificate. You need to prove that he's your kid,' which we have done. But uh, yeah. So maybe we can reverse that and use the same [inaudible word] type-thinking on the other one."

Palin is among the most high-profile members of the GOP to encourage doubts about the legitimacy of the president on citizenship grounds. Such questions were investigated by staffers on the McCain-Palin campaign during 2008, former general counsel Trevor Potter told The Washington Independent in July, and found them baseless.

"To the extent that we could, we looked into the substantive side of these allegations," Potter said. "We never saw any evidence that then-Senator Obama had been born outside of the United States. We saw rumors, but nothing that could be sourced to evidence. There were no statements and no documents that suggested he was born somewhere else.

"On the other side, there was proof that he was born in Hawaii," Potter added. "There was a certificate issued by the state's Department of Health, and the responsible official in the state saying that he had personally seen the original certificate. There was a birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser, which would be very difficult to invent or plant 47 years in advance."

A spokesperson for Republican National Committee that same month said chairman Michael Steele believed that questions about Obama's birth certificate were "an unnecessary distraction". He "believes that the president is a U.S. citizen," spokesperson Gail Gitcho told The Plum Line.