Dave Weigel has a very good look at how the CA Republican Senate primary between Carly Fiorina and Assemblyman Chuck DeVore is shaping up.
Included: DeVore's apparent comfort with the birther movement.
“The president is doing himself no favors by spending millions of dollars to block the release of documents surrounding his birth certificate,” said DeVore. “As long as the president keeps fighting tooth and nail to prevent the release of such things, people are going to remain skeptical.”
The door was left open, said DeVore, because Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign didn’t go after Obama when it had the chance.
About the emphasis added text -- earlier this year, Mike Huckabee said the simplest way to disprove birthers was by noting that Hillary Clinton didn't bring up the issue in the primary (and you know she brought up a lot -- including that chill-inducing allusion to assassination).
"The reason that we knew this [birther argument] wasn't true was because, I promise you, Hillary Clinton and her very careful research would have found this out and used it in the primary.
I keep telling people 'I know the Clintons well. There's no way this would've escaped them, and they would've pulled the trigger long before the election'."
UPDATE: DeVore's camp is pushing back against association with the Birther movement.
His spokesman tells TPM:
"Assemblyman DeVore believes that Barack Obama is the rightful, legitimate and constitutional President of the United States."
DeVore's team also claims his comments in the Washington Independent interview were taken out of context, and in response, Dave Weigel posts the full transcription of that conversation.
There are more words, but the tone is similar.
At any rate, DeVore's new statement is pretty unequivocal.
"I said ten years ago that the move to impeach and convict President Clinton was a distraction from countering his liberal policies. So too is the effort now to question President Obama's legitimacy. Make no mistake, the Constitution is clear: Barack Obama is the President. The more time Carly Fiorina's campaign spends on this side issue, the less time we have to work against the far-left agenda and failed policies of President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Senator Boxer."
