Conservative talk show host Rusty Humphries asked the former Republican vice presidential candidate whether she would make Obama's birth certificate an issue if she ran for president.
"I think the public rightfully is still making it an issue. I don't have a problem with that," Palin answered. Humphries pressed her on whether it's fair to question whether the president is really a natural-born citizen. "I think it's a fair question," she responded. (Listen to the interview here.)
Thursday night, Palin declared on her Facebook page: "At no point -- not during the campaign, and not during recent interviews -- have I asked the president to produce his birth certificate or suggested that he was not born in the United States."
Palin also complained that "it was seemingly fair game during the 2008 election for many on the left to badger my doctor and lawyer for proof that Trig is in fact my child." (The boy, who has Down syndrome, was born four months before John McCain picked Palin as his running mate.)
"Sarah Palin is blowing the birther dog whistle. You'll never see a better demonstration of political cynicism mixed with blinding stupidity," Charles Johnson wrote on Little Green Footballs. Johnson recently made waves in the blogosphere by splitting from the right wing over, among other things, its support of conspiracy theories.
Palin's reference to conspiracy theories about her son's birth struck some commentators as hypocritical.
"The lesson she's taken from the experience is not that conspiracy theories are out of bounds," said The Washington Independent's David Weigel. "It's that if there are going to be conspiracy theories about her, there might as well be conspiracy theories about her political enemies."
"So to Palin if one group of radicals makes bold accusations with no proof it is acceptable for her to make equally bold accusations against the other side," Ryan Witt charged on Examiner.com.
On Daily Kos, Jed Lewison called Palin "a neverending fountain of crazy" and said her remarks about Obama's birth certificate were a gift for Democrats looking ahead to the 2012 election.
Nothing the former Alaska governor says seems to diminish the enthusiasm among her fans, who want Palin to be the next president. She has worked to build her base of support by speaking out on issues such as climate change -- in a Facebook post before the one about the birth certificate. And with young Trig often in her arms, Politico noted, she's become "the leading figure of the anti-abortion movement."
But if Palin plans to be a leading candidate for president, she'll need to learn what all successful politicians know: You don't have to answer every question an interviewer asks.
