Pat Buchanan: Let’s face it, a Trump/Cruz ticket would set the country on fire

Via Breitbart, the key bit below starts at 6:30. When he says “set the country on fire,” does he mean people literally setting things on fire in rage over how much they hate a Trump/Cruz ticket? Because I can sort of see that. Trump’s numbers are flaming garbage, as you know, but check out Cruz’s numbers from the same poll:

What should we call that? Smoldering garbage? I’m a Cruz backer but I’m also under no illusion about how popular he is and isn’t among the general electorate. (Although the AP data here is from a poll of adults, not likely voters, please note.) Unlike Trump, he really would have a chance against Hillary this fall, but only because her own numbers are a smoking dumpster — and even then, he’ll have trouble flipping any of Obama’s blue states in 2012 to red. There is no ticket involving Trump or Cruz, let alone both of them, that sets the country on fire. There’s a ticket involving Cruz and someone not named Trump that might eke out a close victory if they catch some breaks. That’s your best-case scenario.

Buchanan’s logic here, if there’s any logic behind this, presumably is that a Trump/Cruz ticket would give the party its best chance at unity against Clinton this fall by reconciling embittered Trump fans and embittered Cruz fans. It would, for sure, eliminate the risk of a major third-party effort from one side or the other. But so what? What’s the prize for bringing the party together only to lose with 45 percent of the vote in a two-way race instead of with 37 percent in a three-way one? Trump/Cruz still leaves you saddled with all of Trump’s negatives at the top of the ticket, with all but the most hardcore Cruz-fan conservatives deeply disaffected with the direction of the party. It’s one thing for Trump to win the nomination by piling up votes in the primaries, it’s another thing for him to coopt the party’s leading conservative lights by bringing them onto his team to serve his agenda. Many Cruz fans would be enraged at him, I’m sure, for tossing his principles aside to join Trump, especially after Trump’s boorish nastiness towards Heidi Cruz. There’d still be a #NeverTrump movement, albeit a bit smaller than it is now as some strong Cruz supporters would eventually decide to suck it up and back Trump. How does all of this add up to setting the country on fire? Which swing voters, among whom Trump is toxic right now, are thinking, “No way will I support that buffoon — unless he puts Ted Cruz on the ticket, in which case ‘game on'”?

Buchanan does make one good point, though. If we go to a brokered convention, which seems likely, it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which Cruz agrees to accept the VP slot. Trump will lead on the first ballot; if he doesn’t clinch there, a bunch of votes will shift to Cruz on the second. If Cruz doesn’t lead on that one, he almost certainly will when more delegates become unbound on the third. Once he takes the lead, what incentive does he have to accept the number-two slot? You’d need to see some delegates shift back to Trump on the fourth ballot or fifth ballot, I think, and then have them end up in a protracted stalemate. In that case, Cruz might eventually cave and agree to be VP. (If only because, once there’s a stalemate, the odds of a dark-horse nominee will rise and Cruz will risk being left with nothing.) So long as Cruz maintains a lead among the delegates, though, he has no reason to bow to any other prospective nominee. If you want a Trump/Cruz ticket, it needs to happen with Trump winning on the first ballot.

Exit question: If you’re saddled with Trump as nominee, wouldn’t one of your top priorities for VP be finding someone who’s exceptionally personally likable, whom voters trust instinctively? They could look at the veep and tell themselves that if that person trusts Trump to run the country, maybe he’s worth taking a chance on. Ted Cruz has many good qualities. Being exceptionally likable isn’t one of them.

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Note the reference to Natural Law in the first sentence of our Declaration of Independence.

It is crystal clear that the Founding Fathers used the Natural Law definition of 'natural born Citizen' when they wrote Article II. By invoking "The Laws of Nature and Nature's God" the 56 signers of the Declaration incorporated a legal standard of freedom into the forms of government that would follow.

President John Quincy Adams, writing in 1839, looked back at the founding period and recognized the true meaning of the Declaration's reliance on the "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God." He observed that the American people's "charter was the Declaration of Independence. Their rights, the natural rights of mankind. Their government, such as should be instituted by the people, under the solemn mutual pledges of perpetual union, founded on the self-evident truth's proclaimed in the Declaration."

The Constitution, Vattel, and “Natural Born Citizen”: What Our Framers Knew

The Laws of Nature and of Nature's God: The True Foundation of American Law

The Supreme Court of the United States has never applied the term “natural born citizen” to any other category than “those born in the country of parents who are citizens thereof”.

MINOR V. HAPPERSETT IS BINDING PRECEDENT AS TO THE CONSTITUTIONAL DEFINITION OF A NATURAL BORN CITIZEN.

Neither the 14th Amendment nor Wong Kim Ark make one a Natural Born Citizen

The Harvard Law Review Article Taken Apart Piece by Piece and Utterly Destroyed

Citizenship Terms Used in the U.S. Constitution - The 5 Terms Defined & Some Legal Reference to Same

"The citizenship of no man could be previous to the declaration of independence, and, as a natural right, belongs to none but those who have been born of citizens since the 4th of July, 1776."....David Ramsay, 1789.

A Dissertation on Manner of Acquiring Character & Privileges of Citizen of U.S.-by David Ramsay-1789

The Law of Nations or the Principles of Natural Law (1758)

The Laws of Nature and of Nature's God: The True Foundation of American Law

Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Volume 20 - Use of The Law of Nations by the Constitutional Convention

The Biggest Cover-up in American History

Supreme Court cases that cite “natural born Citizen” as one born on U.S. soil to citizen parents:

The Venus, 12 U.S. 8 Cranch 253 253 (1814)

Vattel, who, though not very full to this point, is more explicit and more satisfactory on it than any other whose work has fallen into my hands, says: “The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives or indigenes are those born in the country of parents who are citizens. Society not being able to subsist and to perpetuate itself but by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights.

Shanks v. Dupont, 28 U.S. 3 Pet. 242 242 (1830)

Ann Scott was born in South Carolina before the American revolution, and her father adhered to the American cause and remained and was at his death a citizen of South Carolina. There is no dispute that his daughter Ann, at the time of the Revolution and afterwards, remained in South Carolina until December, 1782. Whether she was of age during this time does not appear. If she was, then her birth and residence might be deemed to constitute her by election a citizen of South Carolina. If she was not of age, then she might well be deemed under the circumstances of this case to hold the citizenship of her father, for children born in a country, continuing while under age in the family of the father, partake of his national character as a citizen of that country. Her citizenship, then, being prima facie established, and indeed this is admitted in the pleadings, has it ever been lost, or was it lost before the death of her father, so that the estate in question was, upon the descent cast, incapable of vesting in her? Upon the facts stated, it appears to us that it was not lost and that she was capable of taking it at the time of the descent cast.

Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857)

The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens. As society cannot perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their parents, and succeed to all their rights.' Again: 'I say, to be of the country, it is necessary to be born of a person who is a citizen; for if he be born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country. . . .

Minor v. Happersett , 88 U.S. 162 (1875)

The Constitution does not in words say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners. Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first.

United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898)

At common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children, born in a country of parents who were its citizens, became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners.

Perkins v. Elg, 307 U.S. 325 (1939),

Was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that a child born in the United States to naturalized parents on U.S. soil is a natural born citizen and that the child's natural born citizenship is not lost if the child is taken to and raised in the country of the parents' origin, provided that upon attaining the age of majority, the child elects to retain U.S. citizenship "and to return to the United States to assume its duties." Not only did the court rule that she did not lose her native born Citizenship but it upheld the lower courts decision that she is a "natural born Citizen of the United States" because she was born in the USA to two naturalized U.S. Citizens.

But the Secretary of State, according to the allegation of the bill of complaint, had refused to issue a passport to Miss Elg 'solely on the ground that she had lost her native born American citizenship.' The court below, properly recognizing the existence of an actual controversy with the defendants [307 U.S. 325, 350] (Aetna Life Ins. Co. v. Haworth, 300 U.S. 227 , 57 S.Ct. 461, 108 A.L.R. 1000), declared Miss Elg 'to be a natural born citizen of the United States' (99 F.2d 414) and we think that the decree should include the Secretary of State as well as the other defendants. The decree in that sense would in no way interfere with the exercise of the Secretary's discretion with respect to the issue of a passport but would simply preclude the denial of a passport on the sole ground that Miss Elg had lost her American citizenship."

The Supreme Court of the United States has never applied the term “natural born citizen” to any other category than “those born in the country of parents who are citizens thereof”.

Citizenship Terms Used in the U.S. Constitution - The 5 Terms Defined & Some Legal Reference to Same

A Dissertation on Manner of Acquiring Character & Privileges of Citizen of U.S.-by David Ramsay-1789

The Law of Nations or the Principles of Natural Law (1758)

The Laws of Nature and of Nature's God: The True Foundation of American Law

Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Volume 20 - Use of The Law of Nations by the Constitutional Convention

The Biggest Cover-up in American History

If there is extensive law written that covers election fraud, but it is impossible to enforce, or if a sufficient number of people agree that So-and-So is the President or Pope despite the law, how does that not utterly, completely destroy the entire notion of the Rule of Law itself? As I have said for years with regards to Obama, if you can’t enforce Article II Section 1 Clause 5 of the Constitution, what can you enforce? Can you enforce the border? Can you enforce citizenship? Equal protection? Search and seizure? Right to bear arms? Can you enforce the law against treason? Theft? Murder? Trafficking in body parts? Religious persecution?

Mark Levin Attacks Birthers: Admits He Hasn't Studied Issue; Declares Canadian-Born Cruz Eligible

Not much information exists on why the Third Congress (under the lead of James Madison and the approval of George Washington) deleted "natural born" from the Naturalization Act of 1790 when it passed the Naturalization Act of 1795. There is virtually no information on the subject because they probably realized that the First Congress committed errors when it passed the Naturalization Act of 1790 and did not want to create a record of the errors.

It can be reasonably argued that Congress realized that under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, Congress is given the power to make uniform laws on naturalization and that this power did not include the power to decide who is included or excluded from being a presidential Article II "natural born Citizen." While Congress has passed throughout United States history many statutes declaring who shall be considered nationals and citizens of the United States at birth and thereby exempting such persons from having to be naturalized under naturalization laws, at no time except by way of the short-lived "natural born" phrase in Naturalization Act of 1790 did it ever declare these persons to be "natural born Citizens."

The uniform definition of "natural born Citizen" was already provided by the law of nations and was already settled. The Framers therefore saw no need nor did they give Congress the power to tinker with that definition. Believing that Congress was highly vulnerable to foreign influence and intrigue, the Framers, who wanted to keep such influence out of the presidency, did not trust Congress when it came to who would be President, and would not have given Congress the power to decide who shall be President by allowing it to define what an Article II "natural born Citizen " is.

Additionally, the 1790 act was a naturalization act. How could a naturalization act make anyone an Article II "natural born Citizen?" After all, a "natural born Citizen" was made by nature at the time of birth and could not be so made by any law of man.

Natural Born Citizen Through the Eyes of Early Congresses

Harvard Law Review Article FAILS to Establish Ted Cruz as Natural Born Citizen

Watch: Mark Levin declares Ted Cruz a "Naturalized Citizen"

Mark Levin Attacks Birthers: Admits He Hasn't Studied Issue; Declares Canadian-Born Cruz Eligible

The settled law of the land is that the US President must be a natural born citizen, and that to be a natural born citizen, you must have been born in the United States to parents both of whom were US citizens when you were born.

You may disagree with the goal of the Constitutional Convention, and/or with the means they chose to achieve it. But it's not a technicality, not an anachronism no longer relevant in modern times, nor is it racist. Especially in modern times, it enables persons of any race or ethnic heritage to become President. And it's what the Constitution requires.

You may also disagree with binding precedent regarding the meaning of "natural born citizen" as established in Minor. But in our system, the Constitution, and the Supreme Court's interpretation of it, are the "supreme law of the land." And if one faction gets to disregard the Constitution and/or the Supreme Court because they disagree, then that sets a precedent where all other factions can do the same.

Any Argument Against the Natural Law Definition of "Natural Born Citizen" Can easily be Defeated Here

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