Sure. No one.
Posted on 08/13/2013 3:12:38 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Via Mediaite and MFP, forget the legal niceties about what “natural born” might or should mean and look at this from a court’s perspective. Realistically, no judge is going to disqualify a national figure who stands a real chance of being the nominee of one of the two major parties unless the law leaves them no wiggle room to rule otherwise. Tens of millions of Americans would be willing to vote for Ted Cruz; to strike him from the ballot on a technicality in an ambiguous case would be momentously undemocratic. Against that backdrop, the Supreme Court would almost certainly end up reading “natural born” in the narrowest way, excluding anyone who was born abroad of two non-citizen parents but including everyone else. Cruz, who was born in Canada but whose mother was a U.S. citizen, would qualify, not only for the reason Ace gives here but more broadly because courts don’t want to be seen as hard-ass enforcers of what’s perceived by many to be an unusually archaic bit of the Constitution. They’ll dump a true foreigner because they have to. They don’t have to dump the son of an American citizen like Cruz, so they won’t. Take it to the bank.
But never mind that. Given the angst and ambiguity over the “natural born” clause in the last two cycles, why not pass an amendment to replace it with something like, say, a 25-year residency requirement? The point of the clause was to make sure that rich foreigners couldn’t cross the ocean and buy their way into the presidency, which wasn’t a baseless concern for a group of former British subjects who worried about loyalists to the throne subverting the revolution. In practice, though, it means that someone who’s born on U.S. soil but lives their entire life abroad, only to return and run for president decades later, is constitutionally more trustworthy than someone like Cruz who was born abroad but has lived his entire life here. Does anyone question whether Ted Cruz, decades later, might be more loyal to Canada than to the U.S.? Right at this moment, House Republicans are gearing up to pass a variation of the DREAM Act that would grant citizenship to illegals who were brought here at a young age by their parents on the theory that the place where you’re raised is more likely to shape your patriotic loyalty than the happenstance of your birth. If those kids are trustworthy enough to help decide at the polls who the president should be, why shouldn’t they be eligible for the presidency themselves? In a democracy, the president is, or should be, drawn from the citizenry. People who take certain draconian disqualifying actions, like committing felonies, are an exception, but what action has Cruz taken? Replace “natural born” with a residency requirement, which gives people the power to prove their loyalty, and you solve that problem.
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Obama doesn’t set a precedent. Only a court can do that.
Until the issue is considered on its merits (and not a technicality), no precedent is set.
The fact that plain language in the Constitution was ignored for Obama doesn’t make Cruz eligible.
Shut up ann.Your time is long past.
How you read the Constitution is hardly decisive. The office of President was a total novelty at the time it was established, and I do not think that there is any doubt that it was tailor-made for George Washington, who absolutely refused to serve as a crowned head. Which meant that it had to exclude such able and liberal foreign princes as Henry, the brother of Frederick the Great.
Annie the Trannie has been conspicuously contemptible in her denial of the eligibility issue.
Her motivation for who to support seems to stem from who will invite her to the best parties.
But the language is not “plain.” Or rather, no more so than “commerce” and we see where that led.
Troll
Yeah, just like the Kenya thing sank Mr. Obama. Oh, wait...
BTW, that stink began with Hillary’s people, not the “Rethuglicans” as the Dems claim.
I met Rove in Co. at a conference and he remembered my name afterwards because during the Q and A, I asked what his nickname was ala Bush(”turdblossom”).
So we corresponded for a while ...I told him that there were Freepers who weren’t happy with him during the election..and he wrote back a scathing message about how FR was useless and filled with whiners and moaners. Shall we replay your FNC election night rant about Ohio being “too close to call”, Turdie?
Oh and BTW, at the dinner whereat he was the keynote, he texted under the tablecloth most of the night on his Iphone.
This is what confuses me.
Why was Obama not subject to the same checks, although Nancy Pelosi entered him as their official candidate twice, with a correction to the “first” nomination paperwork?
Ted Cruz’s background seems to make him ineligible, although he could be Attorney General. My top pick, but maybe he’s destined for something else.
McCain was born on a US territory - the Canal Zone - and the legislation simply reiterated the fact that people born to American citizens on American soil are Americans.
Why didnt you speak up before, Ann?
Or non-Protestants. Watch carefully-in anything related to Govt., non-Protestants are ok, Protestants are "not ok" by default.
She’s just an establishment type. That’s all. She’s motivated by party. She sees Cruz as a threat to the establishment she holds on to dearly like a prom date.
Why yes, yes they did, it had as much force of law as the toilet paper i flush daily. They refused to include Obama in that same Sense of The Senate Resolution. I wonder why?
It is a shame how easily "Conservatives" are led to ignore the Constitution if it seems to serve their own purpose.
Can we not agree wrong is still wrong, even if the other guy got away with it?
Why don't we just make it up as we go along?
Except that he wasn’t born on the base, he was born in Panama.
Wow good to know MM. I bumped into him years ago and it didn’t take long for me to be removed from “the distro list.” I guess I whined and moaned too much about his duplicity and lack of morals. He is a snake and I fully expect him to be instrumental in executing the NWO strategy. Guys like him are the problem and they must be defeated.
Apparently nobody, at least thus far. Even Alan Keyes was shined, because he apparently "didn't have enough of a chance of winning" to have suffered direct, personal harm. Meh.
Sure. No one.
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