Snowe's Challenger: Obama is Not a Christian

The most prominent Republican challenging Olympia Snowe in the Senate GOP primary in Maine says President Obama is "exercising a lot of Muslim faith" and doesn’t believe he is a Christian.

Scott D’Amboise, one of two Republicans challenging Snowe, has been endorsed by several organizations whose Tea-Party-supported stances have been subjects of controversy, including one that still suggests that Obama's birth certificate is fake and another which has accused Obama of making peace with terrorists and of “returning to his Muslim roots.”

Despite the fact that Obama has publicly identified himself as holding Christian beliefs, D'Amboise insisted to FrumForum: “The President, he says he is Christian but yet he’s exercises a lot of Muslim faith too. Me personally, I’m a Christian conservative. I don’t hold any malice to anybody, whether they are Muslim, or Jewish, or Catholic, or anything else. I just believe that he needs to come forward with his views a little bit clearer.”

When asked whether D'Amboise believed that Obama was secretly a Muslim -- or how holding Muslim sympathies might effect his policies -- D'Amboise replied: “I don’t know if he is or isn’t, but I don’t believe he’s a Christian.”

That is why, D'Amboise suggested, Obama specifically “eliminati[ed] the [National] Day of Prayer on August 6.” (In 2009, the Obama White House marked the National Day of Prayer with a proclamation, but not with a formal event. This was criticized by some groups such as Focus on the Family. The National Day of Prayer also takes place on the first Thursday in May, not August.)

D’Amboise said that it was offensive that Obama “cancelled” the National Day of Prayer because he knows Obama celebrated a “Muslim holiday” or some similar occasion. D’Amboise could not remember the name of the celebration that he thinks Obama celebrated.

D’Amboise further told FrumForum that while he did believe America was a Christian nation, that “we could have a Jewish president and I wouldn’t have any problem with that.”

The main thing as a Christian, D'Amboise said, "is not to judge"-- except, perhaps, when your president might have Muslim sympathies.

In the FrumForum interview, D'Amboise also aligned himself with the controversial views of the Minuteman PAC, which endorsed his candidacy last month.  D’Amboise said he agrees with the views of the group, one of which is “keeping this country safe”.  Minuteman PAC, an organization that claims to be “in defense of our sovereign borders” and advocates extensive measures to prevent illegal immigration, named D'Amboise a representative of Border Security Patriots.  In the group's endorsement letter, the Minuteman PAC praised D'Amboise's  “zero-tolerance approach to the illegal immigration crisis” as a much-needed stance.

The organization itself has other questionable views, having posted controversial content on its website. Notably, it still promotes a video providing “evidence” that Obama’s birth certificate was forged using Photoshop.

D’Amboise told FrumForum that there are more important things to do than worry about the veracity of the president’s birth certificate. He described the issue as “frustrating” and a “dead horse, literally.”

“It doesn’t matter what the view is – he’s already elected president. There’s nothing we can do,” he said. “I don’t agree completely with [the claim that the document is fake].”

He continued, “It isn’t about the birth, it’s about the birth certificate, and whether they can prove it or not, I think we can take our energy and use it in different areas of trying to get this country back.”

FrumForum made multiple attempts to contact the Minutemen PAC to discuss why it still links to a birther video on their website but received no reply.

D’Amboise was also endorsed by the National Republican Trust PAC. NRT's executive director, Scott Wheeler, told FrumForum that Olympia Snowe will “face a well-financed primary opponent,” which the organization will make sure to sponsor financially to the maximum extent of the law.

Wheeler, who writes regularly for the NRT PAC’s website and calls himself an “investigative journalist,” is the one to have made the accusation against Obama for returning to his Muslim roots and reaching out to terrorists.

D’Amboise says he will campaign on his own merits, but says he finds the views of the NRT PAC “to be in standard with what I believe in Christian views” and is “glad” to have received their endorsement.

The group claims, among other positions, that “associates” of the Justice Department have worked to help organize the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.