I doubt there’s any actual issue with the fact that Ted Cruz was born in Alberta, since his mom was a US citizen, but I’m not surprised he’s getting birfered:
The poll finds that the ‘birther issue’ has the potential to really hurt Ted Cruz. Only 32% of Iowa Republicans think someone born in another country should be allowed to serve as President, to 47% who think such a person shouldn’t be allowed to serve as President. Among that segment of the Republican electorate who don’t think someone foreign born should be able to be President, Trump is crushing Cruz 40/14.
When it comes to the GOP these days, I follow the rule of Murdoch’s Razor: the stupidest explanation is usually correct.
Linda Featheringill
Assuming that his mom was a citizen of the US, how is being born in Canada different from entering the world in some other country, like Kenya?
MattF
I can see that. It’s not the Constitutional criteria for President that’s the problem– just plain old xenophobia.
catclub
I hoped that this post would also blame Cruz for the failed bridge in northern Canada.
I am disappoint.
Cacti
@Linda Featheringill:
It’s different because black and Democrat.
dedc79
“You seem familiar, yet somehow strange — are you by any chance Canadian?”
C.V. Danes
Between the Cruz-birthers and Rubio-shoegate, the only one left may just be Jeb! (other than he who shall not be named).
Brachiator
Ha! Murdoch’s Razor is dull and pitted, but still cuts.
Just amazingly satisfying to see these idiots hoist by their own petards.
shortstop
Cruz need not worry. All those staunch allies he’s made in the Senate and the national party will get his ba…oh. Wait.
FlipYrWhig
The thing is, no one answering this question “no” is thinking of it as a rule to apply in all cases. They almost certainly think the questioner is being polite and asking them about Obama. If you tell them, “haha, Ted Cruz wasn’t born here!” they’ll just say “Well, that’s different, you know what I mean.”
FlipYrWhig
@C.V. Danes: Among Republicans nationally, Jeb’s poll standing is on par with, among Democrats, O’Malley.
shortstop
@FlipYrWhig: I enjoyed reading that, so I read it twice. I’m getting an inordinate amount of pleasure out of watching the humiliating public fall of the House of Bush.
Germy
Trevor Noah said that seeing Cruz get birfered is “Like Hearing Someone Roofied Bill Cosby”
Germy
The obvious question for Cruz: In the event of a war between the U.S. and Canada, can he be trusted to remain a loyal president?
Mike in NC
The Trump-Cruz Nonaggression Pact was bound to fail sooner or later. Rooting for casualties.
Woodrowfan
@Germy:
WIN!!!!
Patricia Kayden
It fills me with joy to see Republicans squabbling about such a silly issue. They started the fight so it’s great to see that it is now burning one of their brightest stars.
If this ends up dooming Cruz’ candidacy …
Calouste
In reality there isn’t any issue with Ted Cruz being born in Alberta, but Trump correctly understand that most of the GOP primary voters don’t live in reality (they wouldn’t give a commanding lead to someone who has never held office if they did), so it will be an issue for them.
And the only thing Trump needs is Cruz to be knocked down a few percent so that he can retake the lead in Iowa, and according to the three most recent polls, he is successful. Only two months ago, Cruz was polling in single digits in Iowa and Carson was in the lead, and now that has been reversed. Cruz has to hang in there for three more weeks to show that he is more than just the latest no-Trump.
Doug!
@Germy:
That’s good.
Vhh
Trump is out to “strip the bark off” Ted Cruz, and birtherism is his chosen weapon. Couldn’t happen to a better weasel.
max
but I’m not surprised he’s getting birfered:
Hispanic dude born in Alberta, goes to Princeton and does the smug Ivy thing, and then goes to Texas and runs as ‘one of you’, ‘you’ being a bunch of white people that hate Hispanics.
Of course he’s getting birthered and I don’t see why out brainiac press couldn’t see that one coming from several miles away.
max
[‘As far as our Republican base friends might go, he might be one of the ‘good ones’, but that’s not enough.’]
Tractarian
It’s kinda funny that, even if you assume Cruz is telling the truth about everything (and I have no reason to doubt him), his credentials for eligibility are, AT BEST, no better than what Obama-truthers believe about Obama; i.e., that he was born abroad to a US citizen parent.
The birthers are batsh!t crazy and yet never doubted that Obama’s mom was an American citizen, right?
What I’m trying to say is that, by any objective measure, Cruz’s case for eligibility is far weaker than Obama’s.
Benw
I heard that Cruz privately refers to the US as ‘south Canada’. Someone should ask him about that.
schrodinger's cat
There is something about Cruz that makes people recoil in horror, even my usually apolitical husband kitteh can’t stand him.
shortstop
@Tractarian: Exactly. And some took it even farther by arguing that both parents had to be US citizens. A few even posited the novel theory that the father had to be a citizen, even if the mother was not. Whichever way you slice it, the things they believe disqualified Obama put Cruz right out of eligibility.
Matt McIrvin
@Tractarian:
There is a technical difference, having to do with Obama’s mother being a few months too young to satisfy the residency requirements in effect at the time for automatic transfer of citizenship to foreign-born children. There’s every reason to believe that Cruz’s mother satisfied these requirements.
Of course, it’s moot in Obama’s case because he was actually born in the US, but that’s why the argument for his citizenship by birth rests on that. If Obama actually had been born overseas there would have been a legitimate question about his eligibility.
Amir Khalid
I can’t believe that Ted Cruz would have been allowed to run for the US Senate if his citizenship hadn’t been in order. Unless someone wants to claim that the Federal Election Commission (that’s the agency, right?) fell asleep on vetting him. Otherwise it seems a frivolous question to raise, wholly in keeping with the frivolous nature of the candidates themselves as a group.
beltane
We’ve started seeing Trump ads in VT and they are a work of genius. The man is truly fluent in the language of stupid white people. The R2R ads, by comparison, seem intent of taking down Christie and Rubio, two guys who are going nowhere fast.
Origuy
@Tractarian: When Obama was born, the law was that the American mother outside the country had to have lived in the USA for five years after the age of 14. She was too young to have met that criterion. The law had changed before Cruz was born, because it was dumb, and his mother was old enough to qualify anyway.
Shell
And if that wasn’t obvious after getting cheers for his comments supporting more concussions in football and praising North Korea for making the trains run on time.
WaterGirl
I got email from MoveOn last week asking me to vote for who they should endorse for president. I voted for Bernie, but figured it was all a smokescreen so they could come out for Hillary Clinton.
Well, I’ll be damned if I didn’t just get email from MoveOn saying people had voted to endorse Bernie Sanders. You could knock me over with a feather.
Seanly
Um, if you don’t think a foreign born person should be president why are you supporting Cruz? Just as much cognitive dissonance as people who identify as liberal and vote Republican (or vice versa), I guess.
I do think Cruz is (unfortunately) eligible to run for President. But I am happy that the crazzzy burfer movement is turning on him. Might do enough damage to keep him from gaining traction.
beltane
@Amir Khalid: The Constitutional requirement for Senators is different than that for president. No one is questioning Cruz’s citizenship, only the “natural born” status of his citizenship.
Amir Khalid
@beltane:
How so?
Doug R
Calgary is actually in the Foothills of the Rockies. Which is probably why he was born in Foothills Hospital. It’s the best Hospital in Calgary, attached to the University of Calgary, but it’s definitely in Canada, despite the oil patch’s desire to be in Texas north. My daughter was also born in Foothills, and she is Definitely Canadian.
WaterGirl
If you’re in the club, the rules don’t apply. If you’re not in the club, they will try to nail you to the wall with the rules.
Ted Cruz is not in the club.
Cacti
@WaterGirl:
MoveOn endorse Hillary Clinton?
On what planet?
dedc79
Wait, Cruz wasn’t Born in the USA?
Now that he has raised questions about Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-TX) Canadian birth and American citizenship, Donald Trump has started playing Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” before campaign rallies, according to reports in The Weekly Standard and the Texas Tribune.
The introduction of the song may be an attempt by the real estate mogul to troll Cruz as many openly wonder whether he is eligible to run for president.
shortstop
@Amir Khalid: The requirements for becoming a US senator are slightly different: to be eligible, one must be at least 30, a US citizen for at least nine years and a resident of the state he or she will represent. One needn’t be a natural-born citizen, as the constitution requires of presidential candidates (without defining the term).
In addition to being natural born, presidents (and VPs, because they may succeed to the presidency during the current term) must be at least 35 and have lived in the US for at least 14 consecutive or nonconsecutive years.
Mnemosyne
@Origuy:
I’ll have to look for it again, but it was even more convoluted than that, because there was another law that retroactively changed the “five years after the age of 14” thing, but it may have been applicable to limited cases.
As I’ve argued, it probably wouldn’t have applied to Obama’s mother anyway because she was not a RESIDENT of Kenya. Even the craziest birther theories said that she was there on a secret visit, not that she was living there, and the law about the age 14 thing assumes that the woman was a legal resident of another country when she gave birth.
Of course, none of it matters except in the birther cosplay world because OBAMA WAS BORN IN HAWAII.
WaterGirl
@Cacti: Really? I had no idea. I have really tried to tune out all things Hillary Clinton, and I don’t generally pay much attention to MoveOn. So MoveOn does not like Clinton?
Alos, too :-) I would think that regardless of what the MoveOn organization thinks, I’m surprised that more members chose Bernie.
maya
Hey, Senator Cruz, is that Canadian bacon wrapped around your machine gun?
Punchy
Y’all think the GOP Base gives a flying shit about consistency or hypocrisy? Obambi is disqualified because he was born in US state to a US cititizen. Cruz’s fine because he was born on foreign soil with a non-citizen dad (I think) and who uses a pseudonym in place of his real name. Libtards just cant see the difference and realize the truth.
Cacti
@WaterGirl:
MoveOn mostly made its name as an anti-Iraq war organization. Them endorsing Clinton would be like Brady Campaign endorsing Sanders. Nah guh happen.
Mike J
@WaterGirl:
MoveOn was famously seen on the grassy knoll. They’re controlled by the Trilateral commission, and in turn control the Boy Sprouts and the Secret Masters of Fandom.
schrodinger's cat
Why discriminate against naturalized citizens? Isn’t that fact that you chose to be a citizen be deemed more patriotic, than being a citizen by the accident of birth?
shortstop
@Cacti: Actually, MoveOn was created in the wake of the Clinton-Lewinsky situation. The very name was chosen as an invitation to America to stop obsessing on Bill’s sex life and let go of this impeachment thing. So there is some irony in their later antipathy to all things Clinton.
the Conster
I wonder how long before Trump starts referring to him as Rafael? That should finish the smarmy asshat off with the million moron army a/k/a the base.
Amir Khalid
@schrodinger’s cat:
I think the founding fathers feared that a President might be secretly partial toward his country of birth.
Cacti
@schrodinger’s cat:
Because the Constitution was drafted at a time when the pawn of European power becoming POTUS was a legit fear.
shortstop
@schrodinger’s cat: Our founding fathers argued that this was a way to protect the nascent country from undue foreign influence. Little did they envision how easily foreign cash could do the trick down the line.
Applejinx
@WaterGirl: Me too! I voted, but wasn’t sure of the outcome. It was a freakin’ blowout.
More evidence that actual people in large numbers getting involved have not yet become pointless. I think both the primary and the election will be able to reflect the genuine will of the American people—both in good and bad ways, as I see Trump doing quite well (but losing).
Meanwhile, the Royal Bank of Scotland says ‘capitalism is failing, abandon ship, get out now!’.
Funny, Bernie (and Mark Blyth, look him up) could’ve told you that all this time…
Dennis
It’s a little more unclear in Cruz’s case, because Josh Marshall uncovered a document that seemed to indicate that the mother was eligible to vote in Canada at the time of Cruz’s birth. If the document is correct, did she renounce her US citizenship, assume dual citizenship, or what?
gorram
@Amir Khalid: Someone else may have mentioned this, but only the presidency has the (hilariously undefined) “natural citizen” requirement.
boatboy_srq
@Tractarian: @Origuy: OTOH, there’s that teeny problem of Senora Cruz appearing on Canadian voter records in Alberta. If that was genuine and not an oversight (“voter fraud”, anyone?) then Cruz has a whole lot more ‘splaining to do.
schrodinger's cat
@Cacti: Yes it made sense then, especially when Mummy was on the path to becoming one of the most powerful countries in the world but doesn’t make much sense now.
shortstop
@Dennis: Once the details of how those documents were put together were explained, it began to look like human error/messy recordkeeping is the likely culprit. However, I’m all for lengthy public discussion of any point that makes life harder for Ted Cruz.
@boatboy_srq: Not actual voter records, but a list (put together of door-to-door canvassers who apparently didn’t require proof) of persons eligible to vote. If there were an actual record of her voting, that would be great fun.
Mnemosyne
@Amir Khalid:
To tie it in to my favorite musical, the actual clause is:
So, technically, there was a window of time where someone who had been born in a foreign country (like, say, the Dutch colony of St. Croix) but was a US citizen when the Constitution was adopted could become president, but they would have had to become a citizen prior to 1788.
Peale
@Tractarian: The birthers are batsh!t crazy and yet never doubted that Obama’s mom was an American citizen, right?
They assume that birthright citizenship passes from the father so the mother doesn’t really matter. Since she then, after her career in pornography, moved to Indonesia, she hadn’t been in the US long enough after her 18th birthday for her citizenship to actually stick so when she married her second husband she was either a citizen of nowhere or took on his Indonesian citizenship and therefore Obama lost his twice. Or maybe three times.
It’s a long story.
boatboy_srq
@dedc79: I fully expect that (FSM forbid) should there be a Cruz pResidency, the first act of said [mal]administration will be to annex Alberta as the 52nd state.
boatboy_srq
@Peale:
Still more proof that birfers are racist sexist scum.
beltane
Maybe the Founders really did not want Ted Cruz to be president.
Origuy
@boatboy_srq: IIRC, the voting record in question was dated 1974; Cruz was born in 1970. Had she become a Canadian citizen after his birth, it wouldn’t have made any difference. In any case, does Canada require you to renounce American citizenship? If not, she would have been a dual citizen and her American citizenship would still count.
boatboy_srq
@shortstop: Considering that the VOTER FRAUD!!11!1! crowd doesn’t observe such niceties in the US, that’s hardly – oh, wait. Caucasian (of Hispanic origin, but still). Riiiiight.
It would indeed be tres delish if such a record did surface. I’m betting on a Super Tuesday Surprise for that.
Peale
@shortstop: Yeah. When I voted I voted for them not to endorse, but seriously, they should endorse her. They were founded, as you say, as the astro-turf organization to prop up Bill in his time of need.
Cacti
@Dennis:
The only way Cruz could lose Sanguinis citizenship through his mother is if there is proof that she affirmatively relinquished US citizenship before his birth.
Even if she obtained naturalized citizenship in Canada, she’d only lose her US citizenship if she obtained the former with the specific intent of relinquishing the latter.
You can’t inadvertently lose your US citizenship.
shortstop
@Origuy: Right, but the Cruz camp has been saying all along that she was never a Canadian citizen and always a US one.
Amir Khalid
@Mnemosyne:
Oh of course, since there couldn’t have been anyone born in the USA at a time when there wasn’t yet a USA. The first few Presidents were British citizens until they became Americans, no?
Mnemosyne
@Peale:
And, yet, ironically, US citizen fathers were discriminated against for a long time if they wanted to bring their out-of-wedlock kids to the US. It got to be especially acute after Vietnam, when a lot of US veteran fathers wanted to bring their kids to the US but were told that only US mothers of illegitimate kids could confer citizenship. The laws have since changed.
(This is, obviously, a super-simplified version and I’m sure I got some of it wrong.)
shortstop
@Amir Khalid: Eight of them.
Cacti
@schrodinger’s cat:
Agree. It’s a holdover from a bygone era.
It could use an update for naturalized citizens who have lived most of their lives in the US of A.
schrodinger's cat
@Amir Khalid: That’s what I have always wondered how many of the Founding Fathers were born in the original 13 colonies?
Mnemosyne
@Amir Khalid:
Technically, yes. IIRC, there was a weird thing early on (in the Articles of Confederation days) where you were a citizen of your state first, and a US citizen second.
Peale
@Amir Khalid: Yeah. There was briefly an idea of going without an executive for three decades until someone born in 1783 or later would be ready. In fact, Ben Franklin himself developed the ritual tests necessary to identify the first president after consulting with Tibetan monks in Paris. This all goes down the memory hole these days. The reason the Founders ended up stressing natural born president was that Franklin and John Blair were holding out for a supernaturally reborn one.
boatboy_srq
@Mnemosyne:
Sounds an awful lot like the new Federalists, among whom are a bunch of volk demanding a new Convention, no? Imagine what kind of Constitution they would draft…
shortstop
@shortstop: My memory’s faulty — it was nine. Tyler was the first US-born president; while the others were born in colonies, he was born in a state.
Benw
@WaterGirl: yep. “Birther” accusations have nothing to do with facts. It’s basically a dog-whistle slur that means “there’s something off about you and your family.” Other examples of how to do this are 1. Imply one is friends with Commies, 2. Start a rumor that one has had a mixed-race baby out of wedlock, or 3. Suggest that one has to be publicly accountable for a spouse’s infidelities. But those are so slimy I don’t think they’d ever be used by a decent person.
The slur only sticks if the cohort it’s aimed at already wants to believe that a person is “not one of us.” But doesn’t quite want to say publicly why someone is in the out group (e.g. See Obama, black). This tactic is used on all Democratic candidates, and as I type this I realize it’s the same mechanism used in small towns and middle schools to keep the outsiders out.
If this hurts Cruz, what it will really tell us is that republican voters feel that Trump is in with the cool kids, and that Cruz is out.
schrodinger's cat
@boatboy_srq: Not the kind of country I would want to live in.
Mnemosyne
@schrodinger’s cat:
Not all of the Founding Fathers became president: in addition to Hamilton, neither Benjamin Franklin nor John Jay were presidents.
According to Wikipedia, there are 7 men generally recognized as “the” Founding Fathers — the other 4 are Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Washington. You can compile other lists based on who signed the Declaration, who went to the Constitition Convention and/or signed it, etc.
Mnemosyne
@boatboy_srq:
Now that I’ve been reading about the Revolution and other events, I’ve been getting pissed at today’s “Federalists,” who basically believe the exact *opposite* of the original Federalists. They have a very narrow view of the federal government’s power, while the actual Federalists had a broad view. It was the Democratic-Republicans who had the narrow view and wanted to restrict federal power.
Virginia Highlander
It should be noted that who and is not a “natural-born citizen”, and therefore eligible for the presidency, is merely a matter of opinion, and will remain so until the Supremes hand down theirs. The question is not as simple as so many on the side of the angels seem to think. As I understand, it isn’t even clear who would have standing to bring the question before the courts. One interesting place to start learning about US citizenship is US v Wong Kim Ark.
Peale
@Mnemosyne: I think both Gouverneur Morris and Robert Morris should be included. Gouverneur Morris for writing the constitution and looking like a pirate with that peg leg.
shortstop
@Virginia Highlander: I’ve been wondering if this campaign might spur a suit that will be expedited for SCOTUS’s review. If Cruz continues to do well and actually passes Trump, is it hard to imagine Trump suing (and having standing to do so)?
A year ago, I’d have scoffed at such a notion, but what a wild ride it’s been…
Mnemosyne
@Virginia Highlander:
As I understand it (and IANAL), it’s unclear on the fringes with people being born to US citizens overseas, but it’s accepted that someone born in a US state is a natural-born citizen. That’s why the birthers had to come up with their fairy tale about a heavily pregnant Ann Dunham flying to Kenya to give birth. If they admit Obama was born in Hawaii, their entire “argument” goes away.
Here’s an interesting question: is someone born in Puerto Rico or the US Virgin Islands a “natural born” citizen for purposes of becoming president? I have no idea.
NorthLeft12
@FlipYrWhig:
This! A million times this! Obama is a special case, and will always be thought of as a special case by those awful people who identify as Republican. He will receive no credit for all the good he has done, and will continue to be blamed for what he did not do, and for phantom negative results for what he did do [ie. all the jobs lost because of Obamacare/ACA].
These guys are pathetically ignorant and deserve anything bad that happens to them.
eemom
Well…not so fast.
I think what Tribe says is absolutely right. #1, the question is NOT settled; #2, an “originalist” WOULD be likely to decide this against Cruz, in that the FF most likely did mean “natural born citizen” to refer to someone actually born on US soil (and that reading is further supported by the fact that they only allowed an exception for someone who became a citizen before the Constitution was adopted). Thus, birtherism has always been a bunch of bullshit with regard to Obama, who was born in Hawaii. The case of McCain, as this article notes, is also different from Cruz because McCain was born on a US military base. AFAIK the issue has never been raised with respect to someone actually born on foreign soil.
Virginia Highlander
@shortstop: Exactly so. I developed a twisted fascination with birtherism, back when swivel-eyed loon Orly Taitz had her 15 min. Spent too much time looking into what’s at issue and it just isn’t that simple. Cruz became a citizen at birth, but only because of a long history of US law making him so, beginning I think in 1790. There is an at least plausible argument that he is a citizen by statute, but not necessarily by birth in accordance with the long-standing precedent we inherited from English law.
I later learned that Taitz’s first case against the Usurper in Chief, the one in Texas, was brought by a distant cousin on my mother’s side, some Mormon extremist as deluded as her ‘counsel’.
J R in WV
@Amir Khalid:
Amir,
No one is in charge of “allowing” someone to run for office. The only way that comes into question is if there aren’t enough signatures (in states where people got onto a ballot by submitting nomination petitions, some do most don’t) or if an opponent raises a court case, claiming that a candidate doesn’t qualify, for example not resident in a district, a convicted felon, etc.
Here locally they have had to start requiring people pleading guilty to an election fraud crime to swear that they won’t seek elective office again, as some people will vote for their cousin no matter what they have been convicted of! If Cruz was ineligible for presidential election, I believe Democrats would have to bring suit to stop him, were he to be nominated. Lawyers can correct me if I’m wrong.
Of course we have never had questions like this until President Obama won election/re-election lately, and many of us think those questions arise from other qualities of the President… you think?
Virginia Highlander
@Mnemosyne:
That’s my understanding as well. This is the essence of the question of Cruz’s eligibility. No one had successfully asserted their natural citizenship under the 14th until US vs Wong Kim Ark.
Me neither. The question for the English was to whom does this person owe allegiance? We inherited the idea that whoever was born within the realm of the crown owed allegiance to the crown. I should think territories count as US soil. Military bases are thought to do so, as are US embassies.
J R in WV
@schrodinger’s cat:
I think in post-revolutionary America, it was intended to prevent Royals from other countries from becoming a naturalized citizen, then becoming President Count von Blueblood de Napolitano and proceeding to ruin our sweet little naive democracy.
There’s other stuff like that, no one allowed to accept “Honors” and appointment to Dukedom and such. I think honorary Knighthood is OK, but a real one you might find your passport revoked, if you had political enemies and weren’t generally loved and respected, for example.
eemom
Here’s an even more scholarly analysis which explains why Cruz is SOL.
(Written by someone who clearly knows her shit, notwithstanding being published in the WaPOS.)
Virginia Highlander
@eemom: Thanks for that. It lays out the case very well.
Mike J
@eemom: Here’s my analysis on why Ted Cruz is in no legal trouble at all: if he gets the nom, the USSC will have at least five votes that he’s eligible before even hearing the argument. Hell, there are probably five votes for just declaring him the winner of the election before it is held.
shortstop
@Mike J: So this is where we find out who’s a true originalist and who once again just blows hard about being one?
catclub
@eemom: Natural born has not been addressed by the USSC. Until it is, everyone can state their opinions as authoritatively as they like. Mike J has accurate analysis.
Peale
@Virginia Highlander: Yeah. I wish it would be true. Seriously, I would actually be very happy if it were clear that Ted Cruz will never be president of the United States in this cycle or any future cycle. He probably will be in the Senate until I die, and probably will do some kind of damage somewhere as some numbskull future president will probably appoint him to a cabinet position. But It would be great to have a ceiling on his prospects that he can’t remove.
Matt McIrvin
I do think that Democrats ought to leave the sniffing about Cruz’s insufficient purity of citizenship to Republicans; on our side it might alienate a rather important segment of our coalition, even if they hate Cruz as a person and a candidate.
Peale
@Peale: Heck. For the next 40 years that he’ll be in office, I’ll gladly refer to him as “merely Senator Cruz.”
Luthe
My feelings on the matter: couldn’t have happened to a nicer asshole.
Tractarian
@Matt McIrvin: @Origuy:
Thx…. I did not know of that wrinkle.
MCA1
@J R in WV: Any whackjob third party candidate who managed to get on a ballot in some state would also have standing if Cruz were to win the Republican nomination. And I’m sure that person would sue in a heartbeat, because victory would mean going from a 0% chance of becoming POTUS to some legitimate, albeit still small, chance of becoming POTUS in a race without a GOP candidate.
Were Cruz’s “natural born” citizenship ever to hit the SCOTUS, I’m quite confident he’d win, and it might go 9-0, with an absolute floor of 6-3. Tribe’s analysis would be shared by Kagan, RBG, Breyer and Sotomayor, for starters, and probably would compel Kennedy, as well. At minimum, Roberts would join that opinion even if his real reason for saying “eligible” was fear of either Trump as GOP nominee or a general election without an eligible GOP nominee. Not only because of the guaranteed non-GOP President that would result, but also because of the chaos that would ensue. Alito would probably join him and not stick his neck out too far. Scalia and Thomas, who knows. I could see the originalist bologna swaying them, but I could also see them outright rooting for Cruz and selling out their supposed principles, unless they’re actually Trumpers.
ETA; or what Mike J said much more succinctly.
sm*t cl*de
@FlipYrWhig:
I am SHOCKED SHOCKED SHOCKED to see deep-rooted convictions and principles being adopted and abandoned according to their conformity to tribalism.
D58826
@MattF: Actually there may be an issue with Cruz’s citizenship. I can’t find the article that I read today but it was written by a lawyer and the short version is that in English common law ‘natural born citizen’ means born within the boundaries of the country. In this case it referred to England but the founders based the constitutional provision on the common law principle. In England later statutory law expanded the definition but the founders were working from the common law. It’s only one legal opinion but it was rather interesting.
ooops someone has the link up thread
VOR
@Mnemosyne: As a test, Barry Goldwater was born in Arizona Territory prior to it becoming a state. He didn’t win but I have a hard time seeing his status as natural born being seriously at risk.
Mnemosyne
@VOR:
George Romney (Mitt’s dad) was born in Mexico to US citizen parents. They fled Mexico because of the revolution and returned to the US as refugees when he was a toddler. As far as I know, when Romney Sr ran for president, there was no question of his eligibility to run.
Which is, of course, only more proof that the whole “birther” thing is completely made-up bullshit that never occurred to anyone until the “wrong kind” of president was elected.
chopper
@beltane:
i just tested my home-built time machine by going back and talking with james madison. i told him about ted cruz and he said “man, *fuck* that guy”.
boatboy_srq
@Mnemosyne: The part that p!sses me off is that all these
racistsStates’ Righters are advocating for a governmental form that has been tried already – and failed so spectacularly after a mere (depending on what start date you assign) five to eleven years it was completely rebuilt into the system the US has today. Been there, tried that, got thetarifft-shirt.Rafer Janders
@D58826:
No, that’s entirely false — it was born within the boundaries of the realm, not simply the British Isles. During the 18th century, Britain had a far-flung empire, and British parents gave birth to children in the West Indies, India, present-day America, Canada, and South Africa, English Guyana, etc. etc. There was never any question that those children (well, the white ones born to British mothers) were natural-born British subjects and eligible to stand for Parliament if they returned to the UK.
MaryRC
@Virginia Highlander: The birther movement was a fascinating wormhole, I agree. I believe their last gasp came when they realised that Trump and Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who had raised their hopes by claiming to look for evidence that would prove Obama’s ineligibility, were never going to deliver. Orly, I think, may just have run out of money since she had to pay sanctions over some of her silly lawsuits. One thing you had to learn when following the birthers was to stay clear of Orly’s crazy website. Not only did its multiple fonts and crazy layout give you a headache, it was laden with dangerous spyware and data-mining software which Orly had authorized and then forgot about. Needless to say, when the site started flashing security warning systems she claimed that she was being attacked by her foes.