Posted on 01/15/2016 5:14:48 AM PST by GonzoII
A quarter of Republicans think White House hopeful Ted Cruz is disqualified to serve as U.S. president because he was born in Canada to an American mother, a new Reuters/Ipsos poll found.Republican voters nearly mirror independents and the broader electorate in their belief that Cruz cannot hold the White House, with 27 percent of all voters and 28 percent of independents responding he should be disqualified.
Cruz, a U.S. Senator from Texas who was born to a U.S. citizen mother and Cuban father in Calgary, Alberta, has brushed aside the attacks about his eligibility as pure politics. But the questions could hamper his ability to rally the broad Republican support he would need to win the party's nomination to run for the presidency in November's election.
Only 47 percent of all voters surveyed responded that they thought Cruz is qualified to be president with regard to his citizenship, with 26 percent saying they were not sure.
The poll was taken from Jan. 7 to Jan. 14, before questions about Cruz's eligibility became one of the most heated moments of Thursday night's Republican primary debate.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Action in the Senate is a non-starter. I had an epiphany a few minutes ago. I'll share it.
Whether Cruz is NBC or not doesn't matter, not in the least. What matters is that the Canada BC creates a vector of plausible doubt. How, in the election process is this doubt resolved? At first, in the states.
Trump is 100% right. In the general election, in every state that Cruz as Pres or VP wins, there WILL be a lawsuit. The loser in an election has an absolute right to sue on eligibility grounds, regardless of the margin or loss.
So, the political issue is, does the party want to run an election that gets decided by 20 or 30 lawsuits? Before or after the voters voted doesn't matter so much - just changes how the general election is influenced by court decisions, which could well go against Cruz. Trump said, hey, 5% chance Cruz loses. Do you want to go to war with that risk?
Yes, there is a con-law issue in there too. But either the GOP "sues itself" in the primary, which flat out WONT happen, Cruz is certified qualified in all the states, so no challenge on eligibility is possible; leaving the alternative, lawsuits in the general.
We're stuck with that. Lawsuits in the general are dead certain, if Cruz is the nominee.
Cruz is not eligible. The drive by reporting on the mother was irrelvant to begin with, since there are only two definitions for "natural born citizen" available during the time the founders wrote.
The first from the law of nations, which requires the child to be born to 2 citizen parents and on American land. The second under British Common Law, as seen in Blackstone's commentaries, which, though it removes the requirement of being born in the US, transmits the "natural born" status through the father, not the mother.
Hence why a couple of the liberal scholars keep saying "under an Originalist view, Cruz would not be eligible," because that's exactly true. A renowned originalist constitutional scholar (frequently cited by the supreme court) even said the same thing: "Cruz is not eligible."
You should post that as a vanity.
Given your points, Cruz is a non-starter.
He was not born in America. Can we please have a president who was born in America to two citizen parents this time? Please!
You (or anybody else for that matter) can post it if you want. If you take it word for word, I'd like to be cited. But I don't think it's an original thought, I'm likely late to the party in that regard.
I’ll post it as a vanity of yours. It’s too important not to.
“I think the immaturity that Cruz showed in last nights debate disqualifies him. “
Immature and he LIED. There is NO comparison to Trump’s family and NBC. Some ‘great’ lawyer, this one...too intellectually dishonest to even question that he had Canadian citizenship until 2014? C’mon!
THIS is the worst ‘club’ Cruz belongs to.
Each cycle, contributions from this group of Lawyers favor Democrats by a significant margin. In the 2014 election cycle, the industry contributed over $120 million to federal political candidates and interests, 70 percent of which went to Democrats. https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/recips.php?cycle=2016&ind=K01
Clinton, Hillary (D) $7,101,091 WHAT can I say??
Bush, Jeb (R) $1,311,555.....go Jeb! LOL
Harris, Kamala D (D-CA) $739,088
Schumer, Charles E (D-NY) $734,322
Cruz, Ted (R) $644,659 GOVERMENT LAWYER, that’s all he’s ever been.
Rubio, Marco (R) $576,185 At least he’s not running for his senate job again!
METHODOLOGY: The numbers on this page are based on contributions from PACs and individuals giving $200 or more.
All donations took place during the 2015-2016 election cycle and were released by the Federal Election Commission on Friday, October 16, 2015.
Feel free to distribute or cite this material, but please credit the Center for Responsive Politics. For permission to reprint for commercial uses, such as textbooks, contact the Center: info@crp.org
And, in fact, given the low workload of SCOTUS, that's exactly what they should do - vet constitutional eligibility of every presidential candidate, by September 30 of the previous year -- which is the earliest closing primary date (S. Carolina) to declare and make the ballot.
This would also prevent late jumpers like Biden.
‘However they’d be inclined to distort the Constitution in a way that would not disqualify Obama. Which would make it nearly impossible to disqualify Cruz.’
Have you learned nothing, Grasshopper?
The hypocrite, Majority Leader Mc-Conman, already did make a resounding ‘disqualification’ statement against Cruz when he refused to clear Cruz the way he had used the Senate to clear Mc-Stain’s eligibility.
It’s already happening. The ‘G’ OP would rather lose to a democrat than let either Cruz or Trump be President.
Just another Ted Zeppelin inadvertent error.
‘I won’t say it is easy, but all Cruz has to do is convince the doubters that he is NBC.’
He needs to ‘double down’. And while he’s at it, why not take out Professor Laurence Tribe?
Ask anyone born prior to 1930 if someone born in Canada can become President of the United States. I keep thinking of my father, born in 1921 rest his soul, who was in the third wave on Normandy Beach, a hero, model citizen and dedicated father of seven. If I had asked him the question he, and I suspect most of his generation, would undoubtedly say no. What would Dad say?
...and 100% of that 25% found an excuse for saying why they were never going to vote for Cruz in the first place.
It would also be presidential of Trump to help clear up the Cruz-birther issue himself. To do his very best to vindicate Cruz’ eligibility would make him greater than ever. He could wait until after Iowa, but I hope he does it before New Hampshire.
The system that’s been in place forever places the job of determining candidates’ eligibility in the hands of the states’ Secretaries of State (or equivalent).
They just don’t do it, they accept at face value whatever the Parties tell them.
Were they to vet the candidates then any dispute raised could quickly be resolved in court.
In hindsight it would have been a favor to Cruz if one had challenged his eligibility.
But I’m surprised the issue has ‘gotten legs’ politically.
New York Daily News?
The Don embodies New York values and here comes the financially troubled left wing rag riding to his rescue trumpeting his horn!
>> he has also precluded himself from choosing Cruz as his VP <<
Yes, plus this:
Trump is very smart, very shrewd, very calculating. When it comes to picking a VP candidate, he will know that he needs somebody who would appeal to the GOP moderates and to the independents. I believe he will realize that there’s no way he can win without the votes of the latter two groups.
So the “kinder, gentler” Trump who eventually emerges to face Hilary or Bernie in the General Election will most definitely not want a hardshell conservative like Cruz as running mate.
Therefore, I believe Donald will follow the precedent of Ronald Reagan, who picked ultra-liberal Republican Richard Schweiker as his running mate in 1976, plus moderate Republican G. H. W. Bush as running mate in 1980.
In other words, maybe we should get ready to watch a bunch of heads explode on FR around the closing time of this summer’s GOP Cleveland conclave.
Very astute analysis.
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