By Eric Kleefeld
Talking Post Memo
Michele Bachmann’s multi-state campaign announcement tour took her to South Carolina on Tuesday, home of some of the most right-wing Tea Partiers around. And interestingly, while she was there she made a comment that distanced herself sharply from the fringe “Birther” movement in a subtle way.
As CNN reports, Bachmann promised to run a fully national campaign. “We want to win Hawaii,” she said. “And we think that there is a certain Hawaiian president who should go back to Hawaii!”
Of course, President Obama was born in Hawaii, though he made his adult life and his political career in Chicago, Illinois. Moreover, Hawaii is a heavily Democratic state, and has only voted Republican for president in the landslide re-elections of Richard Nixon in 1972 and Ronald Reagan in 1984. Obama won his birthplace state by a whopping 72 percent-26 percent margin in 2008 — up from John Kerry’s much narrower 54 percent-45 percent in 2004 — aided by the prospect of electing the first Hawaiian president.
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