The 112th majority Republican Congress now has at least two birthers to call its very own. The latest lawmaker to claim birther status is Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-MO). Think Progress:
Another Republican member of Congress has stepped forward as a birther, calling into question President Obama’s birth certificate at a town hall meeting. Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-MO) told a crowd of her constituents that she is no more convinced of President Obama’s birth place as anyone asking the question:
I don’t know, I haven’t seen it. I’m just at the same place you are on that. You read this, you read that. But I don’t understand why he didn’t show that right away. I mean, if someone asked for my birth certificate, I’d get my baby book and hand it out and say ‘Here it is,’ so I don’t know.
The questioner asked Hartzler if she believed the certificate of live birth that President Obama released last year was a forgery, citing Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s comical news conference from last month as evidence of a conspiracy. To her credit, Rep. Hartzler appeared to dismiss Arpaio’s investigation, saying “I have a lot if doubts about all that.”
But in case there was any question of her birther bona fides, Hartzler doubled down on her skepticism at a press availability after the event:
I have doubts that it is really his real birth certificate, and I think a lot of Americans do, but they claim it is, so we are just going to go with that.
Vicky Hartzler was not the first member of Congress to out herself as a birther. Yes, indeed, we have at least two known crazies in Congress, people! The first was Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) back in March, who outed himself at at town hall:
New video of a February town hall shows Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) pandering to birthers and raising questions about the legitimacy of President Obama’s birth certificate.
When Stearns met with constituents on February 25 in Belleview, one of the first questions came from an elderly gentleman who insisted that Obama was not born in the United States and ought to be impeached. Rather than correcting the man and informing him that the president is indeed a natural-born American citizen, Stearns coddled the conspiracy theory by implying that Obama’s birth certificate may be a forgery — “is it legitimate?” Stearns wondered aloud.
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