Karl Rove: Birther Rumors Discredit GOP

Former Bush adviser Karl Rove is calling on GOP politicians to avoid falling into the “birther” movement trap and to stop fueling rumors that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States.

“Within our party, we’ve got to be very careful about allowing these people who are the birthers and the 9/11-deniers to get too high a profile and say too much without setting the record straight,” Rove said Wednesday night on Fox News.

“We need the leaders of our party to say, ‘Look, stop falling into the trap of the White House and focus on the real issues,'” he said. Spending time and energy on – and getting media attention for – comments about where the president was born is a distraction that discredits the lawmakers and candidates making the remarks, he said.

Rove said he thinks that the Obama administration relishes the continued existence of the birther movement because it distracts from how the president is handling policy issues. “Look, these guys may be lousy at governing … but they’re damn good at politics,” he said. “It fits into the White House theme line.”

A poll released earlier this week surveyed 400 Republican primary voters nationwide and found that 51 percent of them believe that Obama was born outside the United States, despite the state of Hawaii’s release of his birth certificate. Just 28 percent said he was born in the country and 21 percent said they were “not sure.”

Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said Thursday on CNN that he has “a hard time believing that poll” and thinks “most people understand and accept the reality – the reality is that, yes, he was born in the United States.”

“We ought to get off this kick,” added Flake, who last week announced his intention to run for the seat held by retiring Sen. Jon Kyl. “There are plenty of differences we have with the president between Republicans and Democrats than to spend time on something like this.”

But some Republicans – including members of the House leadership – are falling right into the “trap” Rove says the White House has set.

In an ABC interview on Thursday, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) said “we should take the president at his word” on where he was born but wouldn’t definitively say that Obama was born in the country.

Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) made similar remarks last weekend, saying, “It’s not my job to tell the American people what to think,” though he himself believes Obama was born in Hawaii.

But Rove wants GOP presidential hopefuls to speak out. “If they’d step forward and say, ‘Look, we’ve got better things to talk about, then to fall into this trap that the White House has laid for us,’ this issue will start to go away.”

{Capitol News Company, LLC/Matzav.com Newscenter}