Not to put too fine a point on it but the guy wasn’t born a US citizen and his social security record will probably show that. How do I know this? Because I wasn’t born a US citizen:
…and if the US government can pretend that I wasn’t a US citizen for several years, and if the birthers still can’t be convinced that Obama is a US citizen, then I’d really like to know what portion of the population will accept that Ted Cruz, born in Canada to a US mother and a Cuban father is a US citizen? No really, I want to know what fraction of the population will accept this Zodiac Killer lookalike as their president?
Fine, fine. He can claim citizenship, I get that. His mother is an American and children born to Americans can claim citizenship if they want to do that. I was born to two Americans and the government still pretended that I wasn’t a citizen when I flew into the country at six months of age on my mother’s American passport. Look, I’m willing to share the territorial boundaries of the United States with him, no problem. I’m mostly wishing he’d stop pretending he’s a Texan, because a half-Cuban Canuck that has two college degrees cannot be a native Texan. My left nut is more Texan than he is. The religious right here in Texas like him though, so I’m stuck with him as a Senator from my home state even though he’s the worst mannered Canuck I’ve ever run across.
There is a problem though, as this Politifact article points out:
Sarah H. Duggin, a professor of law at Catholic University, has written about and studied the issue extensively. She told us in 2008 that the question of natural born citizenship is “one of the most deceptively simple, complex issues.”
We reached her again this week to ask about Cruz’s eligibility. “It would be reasonable to interpret the Constitution’s natural born citizenship provision to include children born abroad to U.S. citizens, including Senator Cruz, for a number of reasons,” she said.
But is it 100 percent sure?
“Unfortunately, we cannot say for sure without either a definitive Supreme Court ruling, or an amendment to clarify the Constitution.”
Politifact
What I’d like is for the SCOTUS to rule on this subject before we accept that this man is eligible to run for President. It’s a reasonable request, and I suggest that someone get started on this now, because I’d really hate to have to still be pointing this fact out come 2016.
The fun part of all of this will be listening to Obama birthers explain why their man Ted is different than Obama. Where is Ted Cruz’s birth certificate? His naturalization papers? How, exactly did he become a US citizen so easily, when (as I’ve pointed out in the linked article above) it took me years to get the government to admit I was a citizen, even when I had two parents who were both from the US?
No, I’m not kidding. I want an explanation before I accept that the man can even run for President. He is a US citizen because of his mother’s citizenship if he wants to claim US citizenship. US law, if not clear, is pretty definitive on that point. That in no way means that the Constitution allows that either of us, born in similar situations, can serve as President. That is up to the SCOTUS to decide.
Once that question is answered, then we can get to the even bigger question; Does Ted Cruz have the mental capability to serve as President of the United States and not manage to start World War 3 within a few minutes of taking the oath? I actually think that question is marginally more important.
There is an interesting Google fail related to this issue. If you query Google on the nationality of Ted Cruz, the search returns a result of “American”.
Now, I’m sorry Google, but American is not a nationality. A Brazilian native is also an American. American is a hemispherical status, not a national status. Ted Cruz’s nationality is actually in question here. He was born a Canadian. From his father he might have had the right to claim citizenship in Cuba. He definitely would be granted citizenship in the US from his mother’s citizenship, if he applied.
But that nationality would be United States or US, not American. This is easily demonstrable by a search of countries. There is no country called America.
I get it that we refer to ourselves colloquially as Americans. This is a lot like Germans thinking of themselves as Deutsche, Germany as Deutschland. However, everyone who lives in the Americas is American, they just don’t happen to be citizens of the United States. Nationality is United States or US, like German nationality is DE.
I’d appreciate it if you’d fix that, Google.
The March 24th edition of the Austin American Statesman puts the shoe on the other foot:
There are those who can imagine Ted Cruz being elected president – or at least being the 2016 Republican nominee – and those who cannot and will not allow themselves to contemplate that possibility. I am among the former, in part because every prediction of Cruz’s imminent political self-immolation so far has proved wrong, and because of how unhinged Cruz deniers tend to get in their denials.
Austin American Statesman
Look, I get it. He won once, he can win again (not against Hillary) What I’d like to establish is baseline credentials for being able to do the job. First on that list is eligibility. I don’t think he even passes that test; which doesn’t even begin to address the far more important fact that he’s not a real person, or as the Statesman article goes on to note:
Cruz is testing the proposition whether, amid the rise of the tea party movement, there may be longing in the conservative movement for a return to its roughest theocratic and insurrectionary edges, albeit as brought to you to by a Princeton/Harvard anti-intellectual intellectual.
Austin American Statesman
The guy has two degrees. He’s not stupid. The jury is still out on his sanity, so I can’t say if he’s crazy. But the concept of an anti-intellectual intellectual is fake. It is a pose, a hypocrisy, a false piety. There isn’t any way he can keep up the image of borderline wacko for the next two years.
You also might want to take a look at tedcruz.com if you think this guy is serious about winning the election. That’s some quality planning showing, right there. If you can’t even get the pre-candidacy resources in place before announcing, your ability to run the far more complex machine we call the US government will be (and should be) the highest concern of any voter.
It won’t be, but it should be.
Come on I hear you saying, he can’t be that bad, can he?
If you think that, then in my opinion you haven’t been playing enough attention. Ted Cruz is the guy who convinced the House of Representatives to shutdown the government in 2013. If he had gotten his way, the government would still be shut down, which means it probably would have collapsed and been replaced by some other system of government (that’s what happens when you create a power vacuum. Other systems emerge to take the previous one’s place) probably one not based on such arbitrary notions as representational democracy.
Some of you would probably be fine with that. You people scare me.
Here’s some more food for thought. After his announcement (at the religious college where the students were compelled to attend) several people spoke out concerning his unsuitability to be President, including California Governor Jerry Brown who said he was “absolutely unfit to be running for office.”
In response, Ted Cruz commented to the Tribune:
“You know it used to be it is accepted scientific wisdom the Earth is flat, and this heretic named Galileo was branded a denier”
Texas Tribune
I’m a bit of a science geek. Have been one all my life. The stunning lack of scientific understanding evident in that statement should give anyone pause to wonder what this guy is doing in government at all, much less running for President.
Why you ask? Let me explain it to you.
First off, it was Eratosthenes of Cyrene who calculated the circumference of the earth, a couple of hundred years before the birth of Christ, or Before the Common Era (BCE) as it is noted these days. So, while the myth goes that people thought the world was flat, most people have not thought so for a very, very long time. It is the modern era that has seen the creation of the Flat Earth Society, a tribute to the stupidity we humans can descend to when divorced from the natural world by layers of technology, and reliance on ancient texts, for our knowledge.
Secondly, Galileo Galilei promoted the idea of a heliocentric system, as theorized by Nicolaus Copernicus more than a hundred years earlier, and was jailed by the then Ted Cruz’s of the world at the time (the Roman Catholic Church) for daring to contradict scriptural doctrine. The church finally apologized for this indignity in 1992 when Pope John Paul II admitted the church acted in error.
It only took 300 years. Not an inspiring observation. Ted Cruz is displaying some Sarah Palin level savvy on the subject of reality. Also not very inspiring. Or to paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen:
“Senator, you’re no Galileo Galilei“
This Forbes article goes into just how wrong Cruz is, when it comes to global warming. Yes, the same Forbes that is solidly pro-business:
“The 10 warmest years in the instrumental record, with the exception of 1998, have now occurred since 2000. This trend continues a long-term warming of the planet, according to an analysis of surface temperature measurements by scientists at NASA ’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies.”
Source NASA, NOAA Find 2014 Warmest Year in Modern Record
Summary
Ted Cruz could be a US citizen through his mother if he claims US citizenship. He now needs to get a nod from the SCOTUS clarifying his eligibility status. Then he’s free to trip on his own light-footed contact with reality while believing he is running for President. Not just on this one subject, the subject of his possibly ever being president of the United States, but nearly all of reality that is not directly related to conservative dogma. I’m just waiting for the sound of a campaign implosion, like so many of the also-rans last time round (Yes, I’m looking at you Mr. Trump) Then we can get to the real political races.
Postscript
Ted Cruz never made it out of the primary for the presidential race. He was almost defeated by an unknown Democratic opponent named Beto O’Rourke for his own Senate seat in 2018. Donald Trump became President instead. The country has gone mad in the subsequent four years, and Ted Cruz helped Donald Trump attempt a coup in Washington D.C. this week (January 6, 2021) during the counting of the electoral college votes that handed the presidency to Joe Biden. Hold onto your butts. Hope we’re all still here in two weeks for the inauguration.
Yes, he is that bad. The thought of him as president scares me to death. He does plenty of damage already. I was also one of those who thought he couldn't run for president because he wasn't born here. Unfortunately, according to the Harvard Law Review opinion I read a few days ago, he can. Apparently the commonly accepted definition and the accepted legal definition of 'natural born' are different. 🙁
"All the sources routinely used to interpret the Constitution confirm that the phrase “natural born Citizen” has a specific meaning: namely, someone who was a U.S. citizen at birth with no need to go through a naturalization proceeding at some later time. And Congress has made equally clear from the time of the framing of the Constitution to the current day that, subject to certain residency requirements on the parents, someone born to a U.S. citizen parent generally becomes a U.S. citizen without regard to whether the birth takes place in Canada, the Canal Zone, or the continental United States."
http://harvardlawreview.org/2015/03/on-the-meaning-of-natural-born-citizen/
Thanks for the link!
He hasn't proven he's a citizen. I get that he's the child of a US mother. Social Security tried to deny my disability based on the simple fact that my father's citizenship was unknown. So it's hardly a case-closed argument that he's a US citizen.
Where is his passport?
I start with the citizenship argument simply because it's the first argument, and because the birthers have had a heyday with President Obama for 8 years. Now these same xenophobes will get behind Cruz because he looks and talks like them. I love ribbing hypocrites.
Much like Palin, though, he doesn't have the mental agility to be President.
This will become more obvious as others enter the race.