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True. But as a tactical matter, I still think Cruz missed an opportunity to boomerang the issue on Trump. When The Donald started harrumphing about "some say Ted's not eligible, I don't know, but it's being said, and maybe we need to find out," etc., Cruz should just have smiled and replied, "Donald, I hate to break the news to you, but my family's been here about 200 years longer than yours." He could then have told a couple of colorful stories about his various Irish and Italian ancestors and offered to wear a shamrock and spring for the pizza if Trump would put on a kilt or lederhosen. IOW, turn it into a joke.

No, that would not have been an answer to those who were busily inventing fictitious constitutional definitions of "native born," but c'mon: he was debating Donald Trump. Poor Ted, champion debater, could not think outside of the box. Trump does not operate in the world of strict linear logic. His Republican primary opponents never adjusted. But that's ancient history.

Cruz wasn't lucky enough to have had an ancestor with Washington at Valley Forge or on either side of The Angle at Gettysburg. He would have had to make do with a humbler American icon. But whatever his Irish forebears were doing in backwoods America in the 1730's and 40's, and whatever his factory hand Irish and Italian forebears were doing in the 1880's and 90's, would have anchored his story in such a way that Trump's harrumphing would have seemed silly -- especially coming from a man whose own family were recent newcomers.