According to a new poll, 51 percent of Republicans who intend to vote in their party’s primaries do not believe that President Obama was born in the United States. Among these birthers, Mike Huckabee is the preferred candidate with 24 percent of the vote, followed by Sarah Palin at 19 percent, “someone else” at 15 percent, Newt Gingrich at 14 percent, and Mitt Romney at 11 percent. Unfortunately for the birthers, though, Huckabee, the winner of the birther primary, has made it clear that he doesn’t subscribe to such conspiracy theories.
As he said on Geraldo at Largeon July 26, 2009, “The reason that we knew this wasn’t true is that I promise you that Hillary Clinton and her very careful research would have found this out.” As he was drowned out by crosstalk and Geraldo’s laughter, Huckabee continued, “I kept telling people, there’s no way this would have escaped them, and they would have pulled the trigger on it long before the election.”
Is it possible that birthers realize Huckabee isn’t one of them and prefer him anyway? Sure. After all, there’s nothing that says birthers have to make birtherism their No. 1 issue. But, at least on the question of Obama’s natural-born citizenship, Palin seems to be the prospective candidate they should be rallying around, since she told a talk-radio host in December of 2009 that “the public rightfully is still making [Obama’s birth certificate] an issue.”
Poll: 51 percent of GOP-ers still want the birth certificate [Politico]
