White House tries to move on from debate over controversial N.Y. mosque

White House officials are ready to move past President Obama’s controversial decision to weigh in on the so-called Ground Zero Mosque.

Obama’s comments seemingly endorsing the building of a mosque several blocks from the site of the 2001 terrorist attacks sparked a firestorm over the weekend. Many Republicans appear intent on making the comments a midterm election issue.

{mosads}But now that the president has had his say, the White House communications shop is looking to move on, according to spokesman Bill Burton.

“I think we’ve had a pretty fulsome conversation about it,” Burton said. “And unfortunately, me and [Robert] Gibbs and [Dan] Pfeiffer don’t have any control over what happens on cable television or in your newspapers. So I assume that people will continue to talk about it, but I think that we’ve addressed this to a pretty full extent.”

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the House’s only Muslim member, said Monday morning that he does not think Obama’s remarks during an Iftar dinner at the White House will hurt Democrats in November.

“Absolutely not,” Ellison said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

“The truth is that we’re a party of principle,” the second-term lawmaker added. “We believe in the idea of religious liberty.”

Republicans, however, are largely unified behind the message that while the group in New York City might have the right to build a mosque near Ground Zero in lower Manhattan, they still should not do it.

Burton insisted that the White House is not concerned with whatever strategy Republicans are employing, saying Obama said what he thought was right.

“I can’t speak to the politics of what the Republicans are doing,” Burton said. “And the president didn’t do this because of the politics. He spoke about it because he feels he has an obligation as the president to address this.”

While the issue is sure to hang around — with lawmakers out on the campaign trail and Election Day just more than 75 days away —± the White House says it has nothing more to add.

“I think that it’s a debate that was had, and we’ve weighed in,” Burton said.