Rove to GOP: Beware of Birthers
Politico reports:
Former Bush adviser Karl Rove is calling on GOP politicians to avoid falling into the “birther” movement trap and to stop fueling rumors that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States.
“Within our party, we’ve got to be very careful about allowing these people who are the birthers and the 9/11-deniers to get too high a profile and say too much without setting the record straight, ” Rove said Wednesday night on Fox News.
“We need the leaders of our party to say, ‘Look, stop falling into the trap of the White House and focus on the real issues,’” he said. Spending time and energy on — and getting media attention for — comments about where the president was born is a distraction that discredits the lawmakers and candidates making the remarks, he said.
Rove said he thinks that the Obama administration relishes the continued existence of the birther movement because it distracts from how the president is handling policy issues. “Look, these guys may be lousy at governing … but they’re damn good at politics,” he said. “It fits into the White House theme line.”
A poll released earlier this week surveyed 400 Republican primary voters nationwide and found that 51 percent of them believe that Obama was born outside the United States, despite the state of Hawaii’s release of his birth certificate. Just 28 percent said he was born in the country and 21 percent said they were “not sure.”
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