Birther's Remorse: Coffman Warns Others to Drop It

It's really quite funny when Republicans try to shift so far to the right extreme that they fall off a limb. That recently happened to Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colorado). He said he didn't believe President Obama was really born in the United States, and now he is eating crow for breakfast. You have to laugh - it's beyond overdue for this to happen. The press should have called out every one of these birthers long ago, and I guess they tried. But now we've got Republicans themselves waking up like a drunk with a hangover saying "I said what? Oh, I didn't mean it . . . let's just move along . . ."

TPM: Coffman on his Birther Rant

“If I had to do it over again I think I would have said, ‘Let’s move from this birther question, the president was born in the United States, period,’” Coffman said in an interview with local station K-HOW. “‘Let’s just move on and let’s focus on the issues that are going to win this election. And secondly, let’s not ascribe this to those who oppose us that they’re any less Americans than we are.’”
A week earlier, Coffman had said at a fundraiser: “I don’t know whether Barack Obama was born in the United States of America. I don’t know that. But I do know this, that in his heart, he’s not an American. He’s just not an American.” He quickly issued a press release walking it back, but shunned follow-up questions on the incident. On Tuesday, he repeated the same statement, “I misspoke and I apologize,” five times to a television crew that approached him after an event, offering no further explanation.

Coffman told K-HOW on Thursday that he regretted suggesting the president was anything other than American, and repeatedly emphasized that suggesting as much was also bad optics. The host asked Coffman whether he was “speaking from the heart” when he made his initial incendiary remarks and simply recanted “for political reasons.”

It was only a few days ago that Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett had to take to the airwaves to apologize for embarrassing his state after he harrassed the State by threatening to drop Obama from the November ballot - can you imagine? A sitting President not allowed on a state ballot just because some jerks (or racists) feel he is illegitimate? Luckily someone had a little talk with this nutcase.

From Huff Post:

"If I embarrassed the state, I apologize, but that certainly wasn't my intent," Bennett said Tuesday during an interview with radio station KTAR, adding that he was just trying to "help as many Arizonians as I can" by looking into their concerns over the document.

Bennett also walked back his threat to keep Obama off Arizona's ballot this fall.
"He’ll be on the ballot as long as he fills out the same paperwork and does the same things that everybody else has," Bennett said.
However, when pressed by the radio hosts on whether he was pandering to birther conspiracy theorists who believe the president was born outside the United States, Bennett pushed back.

"What is so sacred or untouchable about this question that you can't even ask the question?" he said, after insisting that he himself does not subscribe to the fraudulent birth certificate theories.

In the radio interview he says he wasn't trying to draw attention, and was just doing his "quiet little job." Yeah - how about doing it with some common sense? Do these people just not understand that Obama's mother was an American? And that Hawaii is a state of the union? Hello?

The birther movement is all about making President Obama seem alien, foreign, exotic, and just plain "un-American." They say "African" and "Kenyan" with comtempt, possibly forgetting that there are plenty of white Africans and Kenyans, and even some with American parents. Are they making outrageous statements just to get votes from Tea Partiers, or so some of them really believe this nonsense? Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona is the Energizer Bunny of Birthers. No amount of verification from Hawaii will ever be enough for him to believe that President Obama was born there. He recently dispatched a "cold case" officer to go to Hawaii seeking more evidence, using taxpayer money to continue his own version of Captain Ahab and the Great Whale: Arpaio Not Giving Up on Birther Investigation

Sheriff Joe Arpaio said it will take more than a letter verifying the President's birth certificate for him to call off his criminal investigation. “I'm trying to determine if any fraud occurred and who’s responsible,” said the Sheriff. The Sheriff's cold case posse has been investigating the President's birth certificate since August and is currently following up on leads in Hawaii. The Sheriff said the verification that the secretary of state received from the Hawaii registrar does nothing to change that.

That's right - logic and reason are not going to stop Sheriff Joe! He keeps on going and going and going . . .