Scott D’Amboise, one of two Republicans challenging Snowe, has been endorsed by several organizations whose Tea-Party-supported stances have been subjects of controversy, including one that still suggests that Obama’s birth certificate is fake and another which has accused Obama of making peace with terrorists and of “returning to his Muslim roots.”

Despite the fact that Obama has publicly identified himself as holding Christian beliefs, D’Amboise insisted to FrumForum: “The President, he says he is Christian but yet he’s exercises a lot of Muslim faith too. Me personally, I’m a Christian conservative. I don’t hold any malice to anybody, whether they are Muslim, or Jewish, or Catholic, or anything else. I just believe that he needs to come forward with his views a little bit clearer.”

When asked whether D’Amboise believed that Obama was secretly a Muslim — or how holding Muslim sympathies might effect his policies — D’Amboise replied: “I don’t know if he is or isn’t, but I don’t believe he’s a Christian.”

That is why, D’Amboise suggested, Obama specifically “eliminati[ed] the [National] Day of Prayer on August 6.” (In 2009, the Obama White House marked the National Day of Prayer with a proclamation, but not with a formal event. This was criticized by some groups such as Focus on the Family. The National Day of Prayer also takes place on the first Thursday in May, not August.)

D’Amboise said that it was offensive that Obama “cancelled” the National Day of Prayer because he knows Obama celebrated a “Muslim holiday” or some similar occasion. D’Amboise could not remember the name of the celebration that he thinks Obama celebrated.

D’Amboise further told FrumForum that while he did believe America was a Christian nation, that “we could have a Jewish president and I wouldn’t have any problem with that.”

The main thing as a Christian, D’Amboise said, “is not to judge”– except, perhaps, when your president might have Muslim sympathies.

In the FrumForum interview, D’Amboise also aligned himself with the controversial views of the Minuteman PAC, which endorsed his candidacy last month.  D’Amboise said he agrees with the views of the group, one of which is “keeping this country safe”.  Minuteman PAC, an organization that claims to be “in defense of our sovereign borders” and advocates extensive measures to prevent illegal immigration, named D’Amboise a representative of Border Security Patriots.  In the group’s endorsement letter, the Minuteman PAC praised D’Amboise’s  “zero-tolerance approach to the illegal immigration crisis” as a much-needed stance.

The organization itself has other questionable views, having posted controversial content on its website. Notably, it still promotes a video providing “evidence” that Obama’s birth certificate was forged using Photoshop.

D’Amboise told FrumForum that there are more important things to do than worry about the veracity of the president’s birth certificate. He described the issue as “frustrating” and a “dead horse, literally.”

“It doesn’t matter what the view is – he’s already elected president. There’s nothing we can do,” he said. “I don’t agree completely with [the claim that the document is fake].”

He continued, “It isn’t about the birth, it’s about the birth certificate, and whether they can prove it or not, I think we can take our energy and use it in different areas of trying to get this country back.”

FrumForum made multiple attempts to contact the Minutemen PAC to discuss why it still links to a birther video on their website but received no reply.

D’Amboise was also endorsed by the National Republican Trust PAC. NRT’s executive director, Scott Wheeler, told FrumForum that Olympia Snowe will “face a well-financed primary opponent,” which the organization will make sure to sponsor financially to the maximum extent of the law.

Wheeler, who writes regularly for the NRT PAC’s website and calls himself an “investigative journalist,” is the one to have made the accusation against Obama for returning to his Muslim roots and reaching out to terrorists.

D’Amboise says he will campaign on his own merits, but says he finds the views of the NRT PAC “to be in standard with what I believe in Christian views” and is “glad” to have received their endorsement.

The group claims, among other positions, that “associates” of the Justice Department have worked to help organize the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.

In recent days the former House Speaker’s top aides and fundraisers have abandoned him.  He has lost all six of his paid staff in Iowa — along with some in South Carolina and other key states.

Along with that, former Georgia Governor Sonny Purdue dropped out as Gingrich national campaign co-chair to join Tim Pawlenty’s bid for the White House.

Gingrich reacted by noting Reagan’s campaign had 13 aides quit before the 1980 New Hampshire primary but he still went on to win that first-in-the-nation — and the general election.

“If I had to choose Reaganomics or 13 staffers quitting, I think for the average working American Reaganomics was a much better deal,” Gingrich said.

The only problem is that former history professor Gingrich may be shading the facts. Former Reagan campaign staffer Richard V. Allen — and later National Security Adviser — dismissed the comparison as inaccurate. Comparing the two campaigns is “a very long stretch, indeed,” he told FrumForum.

Reagan fired his campaign manager, John Sears, on the day of his New Hampshire primary victory.  On this decision, Allen says it “was a warranted, well-planned, and exquisitely executed action by Governor Reagan and those around him.”

One decided to make strategic cuts to his campaign team, while the other is having his crew trickle out from beneath him. In the words of Allen, “There is a difference between being fired and quitting in despair and disgust.”

This brief summary of Reagan’s initial 1980 teething problems underscores the superficiality of any comparisons between the two campaigns. With Reagan, the staff shake-up amounted to the candidate assuming more control of his campaign — while Team Gingrich seems to be in its death throes.

The former Speaker’s campaign is estimated to be about one million dollars in debt — and struggling to raise funds. At this point for Reagan in 1979, his campaign had already raised $1.4 million.

House Republicans are set to release on Thursday a “Pledge to America,” an ambitious and sweeping set of proposed changes to domestic and security policy, including promises to freeze most federal government hiring, cut Congress’ budget, place hard caps on domestic spending accounts, prevent the phase-out of tax cuts that are set to expire in 2011 and “repeal and replace” the new health care law.

Many of the reforms envisioned by House Republicans are highly unlikely ever to become law, but others foreshadow tough fights with President Barack Obama’s administration over spending, taxation and national security policy if Republicans win control of the House in November’s mid-term election. Another set would require simple changes to House rules.

Republicans plan to unveil the Pledge to America — a much more comprehensive agenda than the 1994 Contract with America — at a hardware store in Sterling, Va. on Thursday. Politico reporters viewed a draft of the 20-plus page manifesto Wednesday afternoon.

Republicans are holding a conference meeting late Wednesday to discuss and approve a final version of the agenda.

Democrats already are calling Republicans’ plan warmed-over stew, and many of the proposed reforms are already embodied in legislation that has been introduced in the House or espoused by House GOP leaders.

The presentation includes graphs on the economy, as well as quotations from Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell and former presidents Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy.

The plan is divided into five parts: spending, jobs, government reform, national security and health care.

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ON WOMEN’S RIGHTS:

President Obama’s speech didn’t do much for Muslim women.  He defended their rights in Western countries to wear the hijab. He didn’t touch on Muslim women being confined, being forced into marriages or being victims of honor killings:  These traditions and principles in the Koran and in Islam are being practiced in the West.  He didn’t address that.

I think he was just appeasing the Muslim world because they perceive–they have these notions that Muslim women in Western countries–are not allowed to wear the headscarf or cover themselves.  I mean you can wear whatever you want in the United States.

In Egypt where he spoke, women who do not wear their veil in public are subjected to very obscene remarks on the street and even sexual assault. Nowadays, even if they are covered they become victims of the same things: That is, in public, in Egypt, as a woman, you run 80% of the time the risk of being assaulted simply because you are a woman walking down the street. They are forced into marriages; their testimony in countries where Sharia is law is just half of that of a man.  They can be divorced with no rights.  They need guardians, a married guardian or they cannot sign any legal papers. The President simply did not address Sharia or Islamic law in relation to women.

ON ISLAMIC EXTREMISM:

Who is a real reformer?  Obama’s message is that all of this [violence] has nothing to do with Islam. He says that progress and human rights are perfectly reconcilable with Islam.  “Islam is peace.”  He sticks to the line that there is nothing to reform in there. According to the President, we are only fighting a very small number of extremists, but it’s not Islam, so if that’s the case then there really isn’t much to reform.  The true reformers — the moderate Muslims — take away from the speech that they can’t depend on the Obama administration to criticize Islam. Between the lines it’s as if he is saying that he will prevent Islam from negative stereotyping or something like that, which is ridiculous because he can’t do that. But most Muslims as we know, believe that negative stereotyping is equal to criticizing Islam.

Obama said “let’s speak plainly to one another”;  I would have liked him to have added, “and that means let us face some of your religious principles and how they are radically different from American principles.”  That’s what we need to talk about. His plain speaking went as far as saying we have a right to be in Afghanistan because Al-Qaeda attacked and keeps trying to attack us… but what inspires Al-Qaeda? Why are people we call moderates not facing up to Al-Qaeda?  What is it about Islamic values that causes this?  His plain speaking ended exactly where George Bush’s and all the Presidents that came before him… and Tony Blair… ended: with the selective quoting from the Koran.  It’s like Hillary Clinton putting on the headscarf as a “sign of respect.”

That said, some of the speech’s passages were tough. I liked it the way he told them that “we are in Afghanistan and we are not leaving,” and I liked what he said about Holocaust denial.  But overall, the speech just didn’t go far enough.

ON OBAMA’S “NEW ERA”:

Obama has now clearly defined that he is different from the previous administration.  So far, that clearly has been his goal: To show the Muslim world that they are different, and that this is the beginning of a new era, etc. I think once he has succeeded in creating the image that he is different, then I hope he will say look, I am different but — and this was a statement I really liked — I will always protect the security of Americans.

American security is going to repeatedly be attacked in the name of Islam.  When that happens, he can always point back to this speech and to negotiations with Iran and say “I came with outstretched arms, I tried to include you… I told you some things about how fabulous you are.”  And when all of that is rejected, then that’s when he can say “Now lets really discuss what is wrong with your religion, and where do our [American] values clash with Islamic values?  Will he do that? That’s That’s the real question. But I don’t know if he will do it.  George Bush never did it.  He used the term “Islamofascism”; once but quickly took it back.  So I don’t know.  We will see.