Hoekstra handles ‘birthers’ delicately

Politico has an article about how Republican legislators are handling persistent and strident comments and questions from a subset of their constituents concerning Obama’s birth certificate and his status as a natural born citizen. Rep. Pete Hoekstra is quoted in the article discussing how he handles such questions when he’s out campaigning for governor:

Having seen his colleague Castle come under attack, Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) is taking no chances.

“Before I got back to Michigan before the break, we’ll go through it, so that we’re versed in it,” Hoekstra said recently. “Just like anything else, if you see a hot issue … it’s sort of like, ‘Let me go take a look at this and see what the status is.’”

Hoekstra believes there’s no “compelling case” questioning Obama’s origins. But after talking to Castle about his town hall, he knows that he’d better be ready with an answer…

So far, Hoekstra hasn’t faced any such questions.

“When you’re in a state with 15.2 percent unemployment,” he said, “most people have other things on their mind than this.”

But as if to illustrate the touchiness of the subject, Hoekstra quickly added: “Not that this isn’t important.”

The tricky part, as the article notes, is what to say about it. The birthers are so fanatical in their zeal that anything less than full-throated agreement is going to be splashed all over blogs right wing websites (witness how the true believers at popular right wing website Free Republic are attacking even Ann Coulter after she dismissed the birther issue as nonsense on Fox News recently, with some saying she’s now “gone over to the dark side”).

On the one hand, you don’t want to alienate zealots of this kind in the age of Youtube. On the other hand, placating them can easily make you look like a nut to everyone else. It’s a delicate balance to strike.