“Ted Cruz Has Got A Problem”: Why The Subtle Sexism Of The Founding Fathers Might Disqualify Ted Cruz For President
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) was born in Canada to an American mother and a Cuban father. Can he constitutionally run for president?
Actually, the Constitution is a bit fuzzy on this question, and you can find a lot of people with a lot of different opinions about it. For example, Donald Trump, Cruz’s biggest rival in the GOP presidential primary, thinks the answer might be no.
It all depends on what you think the phrase “a natural born Citizen” means — which, the Constitution states, is what you have to be if you want to run for president. It’s an ambiguous term, and reasonable people disagree on how to interpret ambiguous language in the country’s founding document.
Many legal scholars say Cruz qualifies, and while it has become a political flash point, it still seems pretty unlikely it becomes an actual legal barrier to Cruz moving forward with the campaign.
Interestingly, though, some legal experts say that if you subscribe to Cruz’s own principles of constitutional interpretation, he might not be eligible. And for reasons that have a lot to do with gender norms of the 18th century.
Many legal scholars say Cruz supports an approach to constitutional law in which modern readers try to understand what the words in the Constitution would have meant to the people who wrote them and voted to ratify them more than two centuries ago. It’s a concept known as originalism, and it’s especially popular with conservatives.
“It’s not: take what part you like and get rid of the parts you don’t like,” Cruz said in 2013. “Every word of the Constitution matters.”
On this straightforward, intuitive, and deeply conservative reasoning, several prominent legal scholars have argued Cruz is arguably not a natural-born citizen. As the Founding Fathers and their contemporaries probably would have understood that phrase, the argument goes, Cruz is ineligible for the presidency — not because he was born in Canada, but because he was born in Canada to a Cuban father.
“He should disqualify himself,” said Thomas Lee, a legal scholar at Fordham University, adding that Cruz should “just be consistent.”
Lee explains that in medieval English law, the term “natural born” originally referred to subjects of the crown who were born in English territory.
Under King Edward III, who reigned from 1327 to 1377, England expanded this definition to include the children of ambassadors and soldiers who were serving the monarch overseas. In the centuries to come, Parliament modified the definition further to include the children of private English subjects who happened to be abroad.
In the late 18th century, though, that definition did not include English mothers who were traveling. If they conceived children with foreign men, it was assumed those children would not be loyal English subjects and were not considered “natural born.”
“We don’t understand how sexist society was back then,” Lee said. “They thought that you got your blood, your politics, your loyalty, your allegiance from your father. The mother was irrelevant.”
Many Americans object to the notion we must follow the original implications of the words in the Constitution with regard to gender. Many legal scholars argue that the meaning of the document changes with time, along with the mores and values that shape American society and determine how Americans of any given era will make sense of the Constitution’s text.
On this view, according to which the Constitution is an evolving, living document, it’s not as important how the Founding Fathers thought about children’s relationships with their fathers and mothers. Americans today are free to apply their own ideas about gender and family to the text of the Constitution.
Yet as Cruz sees it, a truly conservative reader of the Constitution does not reject the original meaning of the text simply because it offends the modern sensibility or because it’s politically convenient to do so. Following the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of the right to marry for gay and lesbian couples last summer, Cruz accused the justices of “rewriting the Constitution.”
In any case, at the time that document was ratified in 1788, Lee has argued that the phrase “natural born” would have carried a specific legal meaning. Natural-born citizens would have been those born in the United States, or born abroad to fathers who were U.S. citizens. On that interpretation, Cruz would not have qualified because his mother was a citizen and his father was not. If Cruz takes an originalist approach to constitutional law, then by this logic, he should come to the conclusion that he is not natural born.
A spokesman for Cruz declined to comment for this story.
Some constitutional originalists disagree with this view, including Michael Ramsey of the University of California, San Diego. He has argued that just as Parliament in London had the power to change the definition of “natural born” for purposes of English law, the newly established Congress here in Washington D.C. could change what the phrase meant for American citizens.
In 1790, members of the first Congress took their seats and passed a law stating that as long as their fathers had lived in the United States for at least some time, children born overseas to American mothers “shall be considered as natural born.” This was a law intended to spell out the new nation’s immigration policy. It is not clear whether Congress also wanted to give a new meaning to the words “natural born” in the Constitution regarding would-be presidential candidates.
Under this definition, Cruz would seem to qualify, since his father had lived in the United States for years before Cruz’s birth in Canada.
Lee and Ramsey have collaborated on legal projects in the past, but in this debate, they’ve parted ways.
Lee says it’s “absurd” for an originalist to argue that Congress would have the power to change the meaning of words in the Constitution. According to Ramsey, though, there’s no contradiction in assuming that lawmakers have this power. The authors of the Constitution allowed Congress to define “natural born Citizen” when they wrote that the legislature had the authority “to establish a uniform Rule of Naturalization,” he says.
By: Max Ehrenfreund, Wonkblog, The Washington Post, January 14, 2016
“Caught Between The Devil And The Deep Orange Sea”: Who Does The Republican Establishment Hate More, Trump Or Cruz?
Dear Republican establishment: The horns of your dilemma were laid bare this evening. You’ve spent the last few months worrying about the damage Donald Trump will do to the GOP brand; the latest debate proved that there is indeed a candidate who can take on the tyrant of Trump Tower directly and deftly.
But that candidate is Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who may actually stir more loathing in the Republican establishment breast than even Trump.
Oh what’s an insider Republican to do? They may end up trapped between the devil and the deep orange sea.
The Trump-Cruz tussle fizzled in the last debate but Thursday night sparks – and jabs, and even a comment about a candidate’s mother – finally flew between the GOP frontrunners.
The proximate cause of friction between the pair was the ongoing question of Ted Cruz’s birth status, an issue that Trump has been pushing in recent weeks as Cruz has steadily climbed in the polls. The Texas senator had a polished answer (OK, where Cruz is concerned “polished answer” is redundant), starting with the obligatory glad we’re focused on the important issues quip, pivoted to a shot at Trump noting that in the fall the former reality TV star had dismissed this as a non-issue.
“Since September, the Constitution hasn’t changed, but the poll numbers have,” Cruz said. “And I recognize that Donald is dismayed that his poll numbers are dropping in Iowa, but the facts and the law here are really clear.” Cruz even stretched his answer to include the fact that Trump’s mother was born in Scotland.
Trump came back with his claim that he doesn’t care about Cruz’s status but that those mean old Democrats are bound to bring suit on it. The claim is a transparent chuck-and-duck dodge and the crowd let him know they weren’t buying, booing him lustily. (They also booed him when he cited a poll showing that he had pulled back ahead of Cruz in Iowa.)
Point Cruz.
Trump did better in the evening’s second go-round with Trump, when the Texas senator was asked about his attacking the realtor for embodying “New York values.” Asked to clarify, Cruz said, “There are many, many wonderful working men and women in New York,” Cruz said. “But everyone understands that the value of New York City are socially liberal, pro-abortion, pro-gay marriage, focused around money and the media.”
Trump shot back: “When the World Trade Center came down, I saw something that no place on Earth could have handled more beautifully, more humanely than New York,” he said, noting New Yorkers’ fighting spirit and the lingering stench of death in lower Manhattan for months afterward. “Everybody in the world watched and everybody in the world loved New Yorkers.”
Point Trump, I think – though in a GOP primary, New York as modern day Sodom and Gomorrah may well play better at this point than any lingering sentiment of post-9/11 unity.
To wit, this Twitter exchange between uberconservative Erick Erickson of RedState and the Examiner’s Tim Carney, who is himself no liberal.
Would I be more American, Erick, if my home state had fought against America in the 1860s? — and lost? https://t.co/tcsGMyOrep
— Tim Carney (@TPCarney) January 15, 2016
And I’m just going to throw this one in as well because as a native New Yorker I think it’s right on target:
Real New York values: Losing 3,000 brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers to Muslim terrorists — and not resorting to Trump-style fearmongering
— Josh Greenman (@joshgreenman) January 15, 2016
Anyway, back to Cruz and Trump. The GOP establishment has spent months working itself into a lather about the danger Trump poses to the party. But no one has demonstrated an interest or an ability to stand up to him. Sure, there have been sporadic attacks from Jeb Bush, John Kasich and Rand Paul, but they’ve been clumsy and Trump has brushed them off. Cruz landed blows against The Donald tonight and the crowd was often on his side.
So the establishment should be delighted that a potential white knight may be riding in to save them from the ticking offense-bomb that is Trump, right? The only problem is that they may hate Cruz more than they hate Trump. They also worry that Cruz would prove a greater drag on House Republicans in November. Seriously.
So will any of the four establishment candidates – Sen. Marco Rubio and former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida and sitting Govs. John Kasich of Ohio and Chris Christie of New Jersey – step up? The four remain bunched up in the polls – and don’t look now but Kasich has moved up four points in the last month.
Rubio had his usual smooth debate and a strong exchange with Cruz accusing him of being a run of the mill flip-flopper. Bush displayed more energy than in earlier debates but it’s too little and too late. Kasich managed to win plaudits from Trump, and Christie displayed his usual angry bluster and delivered his trademark complaint about senators debating legislative details.
New Hampshire had better be a culling ground; else the Republican establishment may find up that these horns and this dilemma leave them with a stinging prick.
By: Robert Schlesinger, Managing Editor for Opinion, U.S. News & World Report, January 15, 2016
“Is He Is, Or Is He Ain’t”: Will A Birther Lawsuit Derail Ted Cruz?
The “birther” claims against Sen. Ted Cruz are heading to court.
Houston attorney Newton Boris Schwartz, Sr. filed a suit in federal court Thursday seeking a judgement about whether Cruz is eligible to become president. Although Cruz’s mother is an American citizen by birth, Cruz was born in Canada.
In an interview with the Daily Beast, Schwartz said he believes he has legal standing to bring the suit as a registered voter in Texas and hopes to [ADD- see] the matter settled before voting begins.
“Why have the uncertainty? Why go through an election or even a primary or a convention if someone’s not eligible?” Schwartz said. “I used to tutor football athletes when they had to forfeit the entire season if they weren’t eligible. The American presidency is a hell of a lot more important than some football team and you want to make sure your players are eligible. All I’m asking the court to do is decide either he is or he is not eligible. That’s the end of it. It’s very simple.”
Specifically, Schwartz has requested a declaratory judgement about Cruz’s eligibility under Article II, Section I, Clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution, specifically the language that requires that the president be a “natural born citizen of the United States.”
Several legal scholars have argued recently that Cruz’s birth in Canada, rather than on American soil, could make him a naturalized citizen, rather than a natural born citizen, as the constitution requires. For example, Mary Brigid McManamon, a constitutional law professor at Widener University Delaware Law School, recently published an op-ed in the Washington Post arguing that Cruz is not eligible to be president or vice president of the United States. Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard Law, who is a former professor of Cruz’s, made a similar argument in the Boston Globe.
Schwartz himself graduated from the University of Texas Law School in 1954 and has since been a trial lawyer in Houston. He currently heads a three-lawyer law firm. He said that he has voted for both Democrats and Republicans, but voted against Cruz for Senate in 2012, and voted for President Obama in 2008 and again in 2012. He said he had never met Cruz and never faced off against him in court.
Cruz himself has dismissed questions about his eligibility for the presidency, including Trump’s questions, as sour grapes as Cruz closed in on Trump in national polls and took the lead in Iowa. “The law is clear and straight forward,” Cruz has said.
A suit similar to Schwartz’s suit was recently filed against Marco Rubio in Florida, which Rubio’s lawyers responded to in detail this week, pointing out that Rubio was born in the United States and therefore is a natural-born U.S. citizen even though his parents were not citizens at the time. Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) has said he would file his own suit against Cruz if he were to become the Republican nominee.
The Texas case has been assigned to Judge Gray H. Miller in the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Texas, but Schwartz said he expects it to eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court, an outcome he thinks would help Cruz, no matter how it is decided.
“Cruz should welcome this suit,” Schwartz said. “He should have filed it himself.”
By: Patricia Murphy, The Daily Beast, January 15, 2016
“No Guns Allowed, Punk”: New York Values; What Tiny Ted Cruz Will Never Understand About The Big City
Exactly what does Ted Cruz mean when he sneers about “New York values” as a reason to reject Donald Trump? Disparaging New York has long been a favorite trope for reactionary loudmouths, always with an ugly undertone of bigotry against racial, ethnic, religious and, more recently, sexual minorities.
Demagogues denigrating New York come and go with boring predictability — and the nation’s greatest city will continue to thrive long after the Texas senator is merely an unpleasant memory. But in the meantime, his cheap insult tells us much more about him than about his target.
For someone who went to the very best schools – and flaunted his academic elitism until that no longer served his ambition – Cruz is remarkably narrow in his outlook, or at least he pretends to be. While he reeks of phoniness, perhaps he truly is so small-minded that he cannot comprehend just how large New York really is, in every way.
Despite the city’s well-deserved liberal reputation, its tolerance for the broadest possible variety of opinions, faiths, and lifestyles is its deepest strength. Conservatives are welcome in New York, birthplace of the Conservative Party and home of the National Review, its late founder William F. Buckley, Jr., and so many who followed in his wake. They could have gone anywhere, but they took Manhattan – just as David Koch and scores of other influential right-wingers do today.
Those rightward-leaning New Yorkers include significant supporters and donors to the Cruz campaign, although one can hope they will reconsider that choice now. Either way, his remark suggests that Cruz is one of those oh-so-clever people who assume that everyone else is stupid. He seems to believe that nobody will notice how eagerly he sucks up to New Yorkers who can benefit him, even as he seeks to inflame prejudice against their hometown.
Of course slurring New York has always served as a thin scrim for traditional anti-Semitism, which is what Cruz evoked with his remark about “money and media” at the Republican debate on Thursday evening. He must think nobody noticed that his wife works for Goldman Sachs – or that he took a big fat loan from that very Jewish-sounding Wall Street outfit when he first ran for the Senate.
In Trump’s response, he spoke angrily and eloquently of 9/11 — a moment when most of the nation rallied around the city, with admiration for the resilience and solidarity displayed by its people. Later, New Yorkers learned how shallow that support could be, notably among Republicans in Congress who resisted approving the aid they always expect when their own districts confront disaster, and even sought to deny assistance to suffering first responders. At worst, support for New York turned into an excuse for hatred of Muslims and immigrants.
But the aftermath of 9/11 represented a perfect expression of real New York values: tolerance and charity across all boundaries of ethnicity, religion, lifestyle, class, and occupation; decency and justice toward those who have the least, suffered the most, and sacrificed for all; cooperation and collaboration in the face of tragedy; and the kind of knowing toughness that is sometimes mistaken for cynicism. Only a rube thinks that New York is about money and media alone; it is much, much bigger than that. New York values have always been the most enduring American values.
Now along comes Ted Cruz, who wants to grub New York money and then insult New Yorkers by suggesting they are somehow less upstanding than he claims to be. Since he’s such a tough guy — blustering on about assault weapons and carpet-bombing innocent people far away – he should try running his mouth about New York on the streets of Queens or Brooklyn, and see how that works out. (But no guns allowed, punk.)
By: Joe Conason, Editor in Chief, Editor’s Blog, Featured Post, The National Memo, January 15, 2016
“Maybe Ted Cruz Isn’t Eligible To Be President”: Cheney Posing As A Wyoming Citizen Was A Fraud
I’m not qualified to second guess the considered judgment of constitutional scholars about the original meaning of the term “natural born citizen.” I think it may well be the case that anyone who was not born in the United States of America cannot be considered eligible to serve as president of the United States. I also think it’s possible that they can be.
Either way, there’s a distinction to be made between people like John McCain and my brother, Phil, who were born abroad in military installations while their fathers were serving in the military, and Ted Cruz, who was born in Calgary, Canada because that’s where his parents were voluntarily living at the time.
It’s my strong suspicion that the Founding Fathers would not have wanted to punish the children of citizens who they had sent to serve abroad. But they would not have been willing to make an exception for citizens who were living in another country for their own reasons.
I can imagine some tricky cases, like a mother who was spending a summer in Europe rather than actually relocating there. But the basic intent of the constitutional provision seems clear to me. If you are born a Canadian, you can’t become president.
A separate question is whether anyone is really interested in enforcing this provision in a case like Ted Cruz’s.
For me, I have no such interest. His mother was a citizen. As far as I am concerned, that’s good enough. I don’t like Ted Cruz but I don’t think he’ll sell us out to Ottawa.
If some people want to be sticklers, I think they have that right. I don’t feel like being a stickler.
You know, there’s another provision of the Constitution that (sort of) says that the president and vice-president cannot come from the same state. I think it’s an outdated provision and we shouldn’t care about it. But it should have been discussed more when George W. Bush selected Dick Cheney as his running mate. They were both residents of Texas at the time, and I don’t think Dick Cheney maintaining a second residence in Wyoming should have allowed him to pretend that he didn’t live in Texas. As it turned out, Cheney registered to vote at his second residence which was actually critical because the Electors from Texas were prohibited from casting their votes for more than one Texan. Because the Electoral College vote was so close (271-266), if Cheney hadn’t been considered a citizen of Wyoming, Bush could been elected but Cheney could not have been.
I thought Cheney posing as a Wyoming citizen was a fraud. But, I actually didn’t care too much about it. I didn’t see any real reason why we should still care if the president and vice-president come from the same state.
Likewise, I don’t care that Cruz was born in Calgary. But some people will care. And I will laugh my ass off if the Republicans discover that after falsely accusing the current president of being born in another country they wind up having a problem electing a president because he actually was born in another country.
By: Martin Longman, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, January 12,2016
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