Cruz Lines

[steepholm]

As I think I've mentioned here in the past, I've never really understood the ban on Americans who aren't "natural-born citizens" becoming President - either the reason for it (it seems an unnecessary smear on the loyalty of naturalised citizens, and on their hypothetical voters) or the technicalities of it.

I know the latter are even now a matter of some dispute - but if Trump was able to keep the Obama birther conspiracy rolling for several years, why has the eligibility of someone definitely born outside the US, with a US mother and a non-US father, not been questioned? I refer of course to Ted Cruz, born in Canada to an American mother and a Cuban father. Isn't he in just the position that Obama would have been, had he really been born in Kenya?

I ask because I keep hearing that Cruz wants to become President, and that this is why he's behaving as he is now. Other considerations aside, would the MAGA people feel obliged to object to Cruz for the sake of intellectual consistency?

(Okay, that last question was a joke.)

Comments

[calimac]

Cruz's eligibility has been discussed, and it's even been discussed twice by me, first (and note what the text link is to), and second, in which I conclude that, no, he's not constitutionally eligible, but if he's elected that will just be ignored.

[steepholm]

And I see I even commented on the second post - but Cruz didn't loom as large in my consciousness at the time, it seems.

[jadelennox]

Cruz absolutely is a natural born citizen under the laws of the United States. That Larry Tribe article doesn't say Cruz is ineligible, it says that Cruz is an unbelievable hypocrite because the pure originalism he claims to support would arguably consider him not natural-born. Children born abroad to US parents, under the last couple of centuries of American law, are not naturalized at birth, they are US citizens from the moment of birth.

Cruz is a loathsome hypocritical sack of shit, but as we've learned to our horror, that doesn't disqualify a person from becoming president.

[calimac]

What you're actually saying is what I said: that, if he runs, his ineligibility by the original constitutional definition would be ignored.