It turns out that CNN’s immigrant-bashing Lou Dobbs isn’t the only prominent “birther” from Georgia who promotes the right-wing’s loony contention that Barack Obama is not a native-born American citizen. Joining Dobbs on the front lines of this crazy fight is Rep. Nathan Deal, the GOP congressman from Gainesville.
Deal’s public feelings about the Obama birth issue were caught on tape this week by Mike Stark, a contributor to the Firedoglake website who has been videotaping the responses of Republican members of Congress to this question: Do you believe Barack Obama was born in America?
One of the congressmen questioned by Stark was Deal, who has represented North Georgia’s 9th Congressional District for the past 17 years. Here’s the transcript of the exchange:
Stark: Do you believe he was born in America, and anyone who believes otherwise is a little bit cuckoo?
Deal: I wouldn`t say that. I have no idea where he was born.
Deal’s defenders would probably contend that it’s not fair to judge him on the basis of a hurried response to a videotape crew that ambushed him on the capitol steps. Fair enough. Let’s examine some other documentary evidence that might shed light on the congressman’s real feelings about this issue.
Earlier this week Rep. Neil Abercrombie, a Democrat from Hawaii, introduced a routine resolution congratulating Hawaii on the 50th anniversary of it’s becoming America’s 50th state. Abercrombie went a step further, putting language in the resolution that states:
Whereas: the 44th president of the United States, Barack Obama, was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961.
Abercrombie’s provision provided a clear opportunity for any member of the House who really believed that Obama was not a legitimate, native-born citizen of the U.S. to back up that belief with an official vote, recorded in the House journal in black-and-white, against the passage of House Resolution 593.
The House voted 378-0 to pass the resolution. Not a single Republican voted against it. Even diehard bomb-throwers like Georgia’s Tom Price, Lynn Westmoreland, Phil Gingrey, and Jack Kingston voted for it. Even the conservative Republican sponsor of the Fair Tax proposal, John Linder, voted for it. Even Paul Broun, who’s so unhinged that he compares the Obama administration to Nazi Germany, voted for it. Blue Dog Democrats Jim Marshall and John Barrow, whose votes fall in line more often with the Republican caucus than with the Democrats, voted for it, as did Sanford Bishop, Hank Johnson, John Lewis and David Scott.
There was only one House member from Georgia who did not vote on the resolution: Nathan Deal of Gainesville. Read into that what you will.
I would like to think that Deal is too intelligent to really believe something so absurd. The authenticity of Obama’s birth record in Hawaii has been attested to by no less an authority than Gov. Linda Lingle. Let the record show that Lingle is a Republican. If there was even the tiniest doubt or the slenderest shred of evidence that would cast a cloud on the citizenship of a Democratic politician, I suspect she would have let the whole country know about it. She has stated publicly that Hawaiian records show Obama was born in that state in 1961. I have to believe that Deal is aware of that.
Perhaps Deal, who is running for governor, wants to avoid angering Christian right voters who believe that Obama is not a native-born American citizen.
A recent poll conducted for Daily Kos by Research 2000 shows why Deal might think that. Research 2000 asked the question, “Do you believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States of America or not?”
Fewer than half of the Republican respondents – 42 percent – answered yes to that question. There were 28 percent who said no and 30 percent who said they were not sure. Ponder the impact of that: nearly 60 percent of Republicans either don’t believe or claim they are not sure that Obama was born in the U.S.
Overall, the poll response nationwide to the birth question was 77 percent yes, 11 percent no and 12 percent not sure.
The highest level of opposition to the notion that Obama was born in the U.S. was found – no big surprise here – in the South, where the response was 47 percent yes, 23 percent no and 30 percent not sure. In every other region of the country, 87 percent or more of the respondents answered yes to the question of whether they believe Obama was born in the U.S. That dropped below 50 percent in the South.
It may be that, deep down inside, Deal realizes that the attacks on Obama’s citizenship and birth status are the paranoid ravings of angry racists who will never accept the fact that a black man was elected president. But if that’s the case, he’s certainly not going to admit it to any GOP primary voters.
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