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San Ramon Mayor Abram Wilson
San Ramon Mayor and California Assembly candidate
Abram Wilson has taken what amounts to a progressive and independent-minded stand in today's Republican Party: He has directly acknowledged that President Barack Obama was born in the United States.
A Los Angeles Times article yesterday quoted a Wilson consultant as stating that the candidate's campaign had no comment on where Obama was born. The story described some state Republicans' disdain for fellow party member
Orly Taitz, a Secretary of State candidate who espouses
the "Birther" theory that Obama was born in Kenya and is thus ineligible to be president.
However, in a telephone interview today with
SF Weekly, Wilson said he doesn't question Obama's status as a natural-born American citizen. "We can just end that right now," he said. Nevertheless, Wilson said he approved of his consultant's statements on the subject, arguing that the state's problems are too serious to discuss trifling matters such as questions about Obama's birthplace.
It hardly sounds revolutionary to dismiss out of hand a loony and clandestinely racist conspiracy theory. But consider that another GOP official interviewed in the Times story, state party vice chair Tom Del Beccaro, said of Obama's citizenship, "I've never seen yay or nay either way, so how could I know?"
Birther idiocy also enjoys widespread popularity among adherents of the Tea Party movement, only 29 percent of whom believe Obama was born in the U.S.
