CRUZ FACES FIRESTORM OVER CANADIAN BIRTH AND CITIZENSHIP

BUSINESS INSIDER

APTed Cruz.

Top-tier presidential candidate and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has faced another round of questions over his White House eligibility over the past week, reviving a firestorm over the issue that first erupted two years ago.

Republican front-runner Donald Trump brought the subject to the forefront this week, after he insinuated in a Washington Post interview that Cruz's birth in Canada would be a "precarious" legal issue for Republicans if they nominated him.

"Republicans are going to have to ask themselves the question: 'Do we want a candidate who could be tied up in court for two years?' That'd be a big problem," Trump said, according to The Post. "It'd be a very precarious one for Republicans because he'd be running and the courts may take a long time to make a decision. You don't want to be running and have that kind of thing over your head."

Cruz first released his birth certificate to The Dallas Morning News in 2013. The day after, he said in a late-night statement that he would renounce his Canadian citizenship. Amid the latest firestorm, his campaign released his mother's birth certificate to the conservative website Breitbart on Friday.

Back in 2013, Trump said that Cruz was "perhaps not" eligible to run for president. Trump was once one of the most prominent people questioning the birthplace of President Barack Obama, who eventually released his long-form birth certificate in 2011.

But the questions about Cruz have little, if any, comparison to the conspiracy theories about Obama's birthplace. The "birtherism" that dogged Obama stemmed from the fact that his father was born in Kenya. But Obama's mother was born in Kansas and Obama himself was born in Honolulu, according to his birth certificate, though many conspiracy theorists are skeptical about the document.

Cruz's situation is quite different, in that he was actually born outside the US. He was born in Calgary, Alberta, to a father from Cuba and a mother from Wilmington, Delaware.

From the legal experts to who The Dallas Morning News and others have spoken in investigations over Cruz's eligibility, the US citizenship of Cruz's mother at the time should satisfy the constitutional requirement of being a "natural-born" citizen. The Constitution does not define what "natural born" means, but the expert consensus is that a person only has to be a US citizen at birth to meet that threshold.

Cruz once had dual citizenship. He said in 2013 that he would renounce his Canadian citizenship.

"Because my mother was a US citizen, born in Delaware, I was a US citizen by birth," he said in a 2013 statement. "When I was a kid, my Mom told me that I could choose to claim Canadian citizenship if I wanted. I got my US passport in high school. "

He continued:

Because I was a US citizen at birth, because I left Calgary when I was 4 and have lived my entire life since then in the US, and because I have never taken affirmative steps to claim Canadian citizenship, I assumed that was the end of the matter. Now the Dallas Morning News says that I may technically have dual citizenship. Assuming that is true, then sure, I will renounce any Canadian citizenship. Nothing against Canada, but I'm an American by birth and as a US senator, I believe I should be only an American.

REUTERS/Jason Reed

There are a couple of high-profile precedents for presidential contenders who were born outside the US. Notably, George Romney was born in Mexico to Mormon missionary parents and ran for president in 1968.

His son, 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney, defended both Cruz's and Obama's citizenship on Friday.

And in 2008, Sen. John McCain's (R-Arizona) "natural-born" status was also somewhat in question. McCain, the Republican Party's nominee that year,was born in the Panama Canal Zone, which was a US territory at the time but has since been turned over to Panama. McCain's parents were both born in the US.

Both then-Democratic Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, Democratic candidates at the time, sponsored aresolution firmly stating that McCain met the Constitution's requirement that presidents are "natural-born" citizens.

The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service also attempted to tackle the question of who is a "natural-born citizen" in a November 2011 report.

The report suggests that someone in Cruz's situation would be indeed be eligible to become president. Here are the key paragraphs (emphasis added):

The weight of legal and historical authority indicates that the term "natural born" citizen would mean a person who is entitled to US citizenship "by birth" or "at birth," either by being born "in" the United States and under its jurisdiction, even those born to alien parents; by being born abroad to US citizen-parents; or by being born in other situations meeting legal requirements for US citizenship "at birth." Such term, however, would not include a person who was not a US citizen by birth or at birth, and who was thus born an "alien" required to go through the legal process of "naturalization" to become a US citizen. [...]

The weight of more recent federal cases, as well as the majority of scholarship on the subject, also indicates that the term "natural born citizen" would most likely include, as well as native born citizens, those born abroad to US citizen-parents, at least one of whom had previously resided in the United States, or those born abroad to one US citizen parent who, prior to the birth, had met the requirements of federal law for physical presence in the country.

Although legal experts widely believe Cruz is eligible for the Oval Office, the courts have yet to rule on the issue and could theoretically complicate the senator's plans if a legal challenge were brought before them. If history is any indication, however, a serious challenge would be unlikely.

For his part, McCain actually suggestedthis past week that it's "worth looking into" whether Cruz is eligible to run for president.

"I think there is a question," McCain said. "I'm not a constitutional scholar on that, but I think it's worth looking into. I don't think it's illegitimate to look into it."

Cruz responded to McCain by alleging his remarks came from his desire to support Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida), one of Cruz's rivals, for president.

SEE ALSO: TRUMP: Voters should be concerned about Ted Cruz's birthplace

Nolte: The Cultural and Media Reality of the ‘Cruz Crisis’

Steve Pope/Getty Images

by JOHN NOLTE7 Jan 20161,140

On his radio show Wednesday, Mark Levin called out Breitbart News over the issueSen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)’s citizenship, “[J]ust because [Donald Trump] says something doesn’t mean I have to agree with it like our friends over at Breitbart, who are going all kinds of crazy over the birther issue.” Levin, who knows plenty about the Constitution, believes the debate over Cruz’s eligibility to be president is “stupid.” But he adds, without realizing that this is the only point that matters, “Liberals love this stuff.”

First off, as cut and dried as Cruz’s citizenship issue might be to Levin, the trip to the “cut and dried” is objectively murky. My colleague Joel Pollak, who attended Harvard Law School,  lays it all out here. Pollak doesn’t question Cruz’s eligibility; he does, however, understand modern American politics and lays out a convincing case as to why the issue could eventually become a problem for Cruz.

As of right now, Ted Cruz has a legitimate chance at winning the Republican nomination, and because Levin is 100% correct when he says “liberals love this stuff,” my question is a simple one:

As “stupid” as this issue may be for Levin, do we want to litigate it in front of the American people today or three weeks before the general election, when Cruz is either our presidential or vice-presidential nominee? Because you have to be wearing blinders to believe that will not happen.

If Cruz is on the ticket, you can bet the farm that Democrats and the DC Media have already gamed out an October Surprise centered on creating a political storm over Cruz’s natural born status. Moreover, all it would take is one federal judge to hurl a massive monkey into that wrench.

Exhibit A: The Clintons are the Original Birthers. If they went after Obama over this issue, who doesn’t believe they will go after Cruz?

Exhibit B: High-profile Democrats arealready vowing to sue over Cruz’s eligibility.

Exhibit C: The White House proved yesterday that at the highest levels, Democrats are fully prepared to make this an issue.

Exhibit D: We’re still waiting for independent verification that Cruz’s mother was indeed an American citizen. Wouldn’t now be a good time to drop that shoe, however it falls?

Even if you side 100% with Levin on this issue, tell me how unrealistic it is to imagine a federal judge ruling on October 21, 2016, that Ted Cruz’s citizenship status is questionable. Cruz is running for president. We can’t just take his word on this.

If that happens, just like the phony late-October Casper Weinberger indictment that killed George H.W. Bush’s re-election momentum in 1992, we lose.

Trump is actually doing Cruz a huge favor. In Trump’s defense, he was asked about the Cruz issue, which  doesn’t mean his intentions are not mercenary, but it also means that the net-benefit has been to prematurely explode the DC Media’s planned October Surprise.

Even if it is “stupid,” so was accusing Romney of murder in 2012, of not paying his taxes, of blaming him for Todd Akin. But with the coordinated help of the entire DC Media-complex, that’s exactly what Democrats did. Nobody believed any of it, which was never the goal. The goal was to keep Romney off-message and on defense, and it worked.

How different would the 2000 election outcome have looked had a Donald Trump brought up George W. Bush’s drunk driving incident during the primary?

This may be cut and dried for Levin, but how does his opinion control the actions of Democrats and the media? How does his opinion change the fact that there is no independent verification that Cruz’s mother was an American citizen.

The national debate over Cruz’s eligibility *is* going to happen, and it must happen.

The only question, then, is *when* will this be litigated once and for all in front of the American people.

Who doesn’t think now is better than October?

 

Follow John Nolte on Twitter@NolteNC               

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