Allow me to make the connection, once again.
If Cruz is naturalized, he cannot be a natural born citizen. The two classes are mutually exclusive.
The Bellei case establishes that Cruz is naturalized. If Cruz is naturalized, he is not a natural born citizen.
-- My two earlier posts are precisely correct--there is no Supreme Court authority that has anything to do with the question presented here. --
There is no need to compose or answer the precisely correct question, in Cruz's case. He is disqualified because he is conclusively a naturalized citizen on admitted facts.
We don't even need go to court. The GOP can disqualify him of its own volition. If Cruz doesn't like it, he can sue.
Allow me to make the connection, once again.
If Cruz is naturalized, he cannot be a natural born citizen. The two classes are mutually exclusive.
The Bellei case establishes that Cruz is naturalized. If Cruz is naturalized, he is not a natural born citizen.
You can believe anything you like but that doesn't have anything to do with how the legal is likely to result.
Cruz became a US citizen at birth under the Congressional power to define citizenship. It may be reasonable to call the basis for his citizenship naturalization but that doesn't have anything to do with the outcome.
I suppose it is really worse--the citizenship statute under which Cruz becomes a citizen is also unconstitutional on its face because it makes children of US mothers citizens but not US fathers under the same circumstances. Read the Cornell Law Review on the topic.
If the argument gets to the Supreme Court, it will decide the issue on what it views as the current policy merits. We do not in fact have any precidential authority that tells us how the Court is going to view that question.
Best you can do is read the New York Times and listen to the guys who go down to the courthouse every day to argue Constitutional issues before the Supreme Court. The Times is telling you the requirement is an anachronism we need to dispense with; the lawyers are probably split 60-40 in favor of getting rid of it at present.
So whatever you like to the contrary not withstanding, and depending in part on how the case gets to the Court and when that happens, likely Cruz is eligible.
If it is after an election in which he is at the top of the ticket and wins, he is eligible and the Court might not even hear the case.
If he could somehow get there now, as in an appeal of one of these cases to kick him off a primary ballot, the Court is most likely to hold him eligible.
The party is gearing up to kick him out at the convention in which case he isn't likely to get to the Court; if he did, I am not sure I would guess how it comes out.
The party isn't likely to kick him out if both he and Trump get to the Convention. If Trump has the most delegates, he is the nominee; if Cruz has the most delegates and Trump is second, they won't kick Cruz out to take Trump--Cruz will be the nominee and the Court will hold any challenge to be a political question it won't answer until after the election. If Cruz wins, he is President and Natural Born--get over it.
You, like a number of people on the site here, and generally in our country, think the Constitution really means something on these close unresolved questions--it doesn't.
Among other things, the Court has already effectively repealed the Commerce clause in 1935. Obamacare is unconstitutional on its face--no reasonable argument to make it constitutional. King v. Burwell is a decision on a specific statute and the Court decided the case the other way.
As an abstract proposition, I tend to agree with your policy view and that of John Jay--the Constitution ought to require the President to have some fundamental personal relationship to the Country in the nature of birth under US sovereignty and familial foundation. But the drafters were sloppy and didn't spell it out. So you will have to deal with the consequences.
In my own case, as I set out above, " If the Liberals get their guy to impose an unconstitutional culture on America, I get my guy to unravel it. Although I could be persuaded Trump might do it; I believe Cruz, if elected, would do it."
If I don't get Cruz I would be willing to vote for Trump; if I don't get either one, I think the country has a lot of difficulty going forward under anyone else.