GOP Rep. Hartzler ‘doubts’ Obama’s birth certificate is real

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.) said she “doubts” that the birth certificate produced by President Obama is legitimate.

“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,” Hartzler told the Sedelia Democrat.

{mosads}The comment came after the newspaper asked Hartzler to clarify remarks she made at a town hall meeting last Thursday, in which she said she didn’t understand why the president didn’t produce the document right away.

“[A man in the crowd] asked what I think about Obama’s birth certificate being a forgery,” Hartzler said. “I have a lot of doubts about that, but 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, but they say that it’s real.”

Hartzler tried to downplay the importance of the matter, saying it wasn’t worth going through the courts to settle because citizens could simply vote the president out of office this fall.

“I think the main thing we can do, whether you agree or not — I don’t think that’s the real issue, the real issue is this November and there’s an election,” Hartzler said. “And you can sue or go to court or try to get [Obama] to prove this or that, but I think that the main thing is if you like him get out and vote for him in November, and if you don’t like him, don’t vote for him.”

Hartzler is not the only member of Congress to express such doubts recently. Last month, Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) questioned the legitimacy of the president’s birth certificate, saying he would “hold in abeyance” his final judgment until all of the evidence had been gathered.

In April 2011, the White House released Obama’s long-form birth certificate to the public, and overwhelming evidence shows that Obama was born in Hawaii and is a U.S. citizen.

Some continue to dispute the president’s nationality. The issue has come to the fore once again, as Maricopa County, Ariz., Sheriff Joe Arpaio claims to have proof that the document is a forgery, although he hasn’t produced the evidence.