A Georgia Republican has decided to tweak his presidential birth-certificate bill to delay its implementation until after the 2012 election, the second such bill to be recently changed in the wake of political pressure.
“Issues have been raised,” state Rep. Mark Hatfield, R-Waycross told Reality Check Radio last week (via Jim Galloway). “A lot of people are saying it’s a political bill. So in order to allay concerns about the bill’s potential political nature, I have proposed a substitute, which would move the effective date of this bill to July 1 of 2013.”
Hatfield said the change was designed to show that the bill isn’t targeted at President Obama — even though the whole issue has been pushed for years now by people who believe Obama isn’t eligible to be President, because they maintain he wasn’t born in Hawaii. A number of Georgia lawmakers have removed their names from Hatfield’s bill in recent weeks.
A similar bill proposed by New Hampshire Republicans, with a similar tweak making it go into effect in 2013, died in committee last week.
(h/t Jim Galloway)
Eric Lach
Eric Lach is a reporter for TPM. From 2010 to 2011, he was a news writer in charge of the website’s front page. He has previously written for The Daily, NewYorker.com, GlobalPost and other publications. He can be reached at ericl(at)talkingpointsmemo.com
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