Leave me alone.
Republican candidate Scott Walker made a few waves last February when he gave a
conspicuously noncommittal answer to the simple question as to whether he believes President Obama is indeed a Christian, as he claims to be. This question is posed to Republican office seekers solely because a now-commonplace Republican conspiracy theory posits that Obama is
secretly a Muslim, and reporters are curious as to which of the cottonmouths at the head of the party are or are not supporters of this particular lunacy.
Reporters keep asking. Scott Walker keeps resisting giving a simple "yes."
“You’re not going to get a different answer than I said before,” Walker said toward the end of a Q&A session moderated by Politico’s Mike Allen. Walker said he’s never asked Obama about his faith. “As someone who is a believer myself, I don’t presume to know someone’s beliefs about whether they follow Christ or not unless I’ve actually talked with him.”
You could put it down as noble principle of faith—
we cannot truly see what is in another's heart, and all that—but saying all would be cleared up once you interviewed them on the subject suggests you can see the stuff in
another's heart just fine, when it suits you to. You
do consider yourself a capable judge of those things.
So instead I think we can chalk this up to Scott Walker's noted resistance to having any opinion on any subject ever, on the campaign trail, no matter how trivial a question he is asked or what past stances he may or may not have once hypothesized. In this case ...
This is as far as he would go: “He said he is, and I take him at his word.”
... he seems to think that if he avoids saying "Yes, our president is Christian" it will avoid peeving the conspiracy-riddled base, which does
not want to hear it, but by very strongly implying that same "yes" in a more roundabout, oh-so-passive-aggressive way maybe he can get fishing reporters to drop the subject already. It's like arguing with a teenager. Or a housecat.
Time, for their part, titles the latest attempt at getting a straight answer out of Scott Walker as "Scott Walker Still Isn't Sure If President Obama Is Christian." I think that means they're not buying it, Scott.