“His Hated Foe Might Not Be A U.S. Citizen”: Donald Trump Goes Birther Again — This Time On Ted Cruz
Well, well, Donald Trump is now having some fun with his new main rival, Ted Cruz. And this new line of attack against Cruz is actually an old line of attack for Trump, one he used to great effect against a certain somebody else. Trump is once again alleging that his hated foe might not really be an eligible U.S. citizen.
Remember that Trump practically built his political following back in 2010 and 2011 by promulgating all manner of conspiracy theories about President Obama’s birthplace. So it only makes sense that he could really have a ball against a candidate who was actually born in another country.
Cruz was born in the Canadian province of Alberta. In 2014, he legally renounced his dual citizenship in Canada — after the very fact of his having it had taken him somewhat by surprise.
The Washington Post reports:
“Republicans are going to have to ask themselves the question: ‘Do we want a candidate who could be tied up in court for two years?’ That’d be a big problem,” Trump said when asked about the topic. “It’d be a very precarious one for Republicans because he’d be running and the courts may take a long time to make a decision. You don’t want to be running and have that kind of thing over your head.”
And just to up the ante here, Trump seemingly invoked the language of protection rackets:
Trump added, “I’d hate to see something like that get in his way. But a lot of people are talking about it and I know that even some states are looking at it very strongly, the fact that he was born in Canada and he has had a double passport.”
Shorter message from Trump to Cruz: That’s a nice American identity you’ve got there — would sure be a shame if something happened to it.
For his part, Cruz has responded via Twitter — by invoking the classic “Jump the Shark” scene from Happy Days.
My response to @realDonaldTrump calling into question my natural-born citizenship? https://t.co/gWfAHznlCY
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) January 5, 2016
By: Eric Kleefeld, The National Memo, January 5, 2015
“Bankrolling Ted Cruz”: Inside The Anti-Gay Church That Loves Kim Davis And Ted Cruz
Right outside this little town, there’s a tiny church that wants to change the world. And, thanks to the billionaire pastor’s backing, it just might be able to get that done.
The church is the Assembly of Yahweh, and its pastor, Farris Wilks, happens to be one of the most powerful new players in presidential politics. Farris, along with his brother Dan, made his fortune off the fracking boom and is using part of it to back Sen. Ted Cruz in his bid for the White House.
But new wealth didn’t dint his commitment to old-time religion—and to the culture war (read: anti-gay) politics that defined George W. Bush’s presidential campaigns. Now, Cruz is taking a page out of Karl Rove’s playbook, looking to galvanize evangelical voters as a way to make the Republican Party competitive again. And Farris Wilks is just the guy to fund that effort.
The Wilks brothers and their wives have given $15 million to one of Cruz’s super PACs—one of the biggest contributions of this campaign cycle, in either party.
And their generosity that has changed the contours of the Republican presidential primary is newfound: The Center for Responsive Politics notes that the brothers and their wives had only given $263,000 to federal candidates before going all in for Cruz this cycle. Farris Wilks didn’t speak with The Daily Beast for this story, but a visit to the church he pastors may shed light on the way the billionaire’s faith informs his commitment to bankrolling a culture warrior like Cruz.
At the end of December, the brothers hosted Cruz and conservative Christian leaders for a fundraiser at Farris’s homestead in Cisco, as The Washington Post detailed. And it recalls a central element of Cruz’s campaign: He’s said he can win the White House by dramatically boosting turnout among evangelical Christians (never mind that his strategy may have a math problem).
The last time Republicans won the White House, way back in 2004, evangelical turnout was the clincher. So, Cruz argues, it’s worth another shot. And Wilks’s little church provides a tiny preview of what Cruz’s evangelical army could look like.
Assembly of Yahweh is just off a ruler-straight two-lane highway that runs between Cisco, Texas, (population 3,820), and Rising Star (“A Small Town With A Big Twinkle,” population 799), and a few miles down from the ornate gates to Wilks’s home. The roadside is dotted with longhorn cattle, cemeteries, and small oil pumpjacks. Suburbans and pickup trucks whip around you if you drive even a hair below the 75 mph speed limit.
The building itself is simple, with tan bricks and clean lines. There’s a large playground out front and a pavilion behind. Two young girls swing open the pair of glass entrance doors when I walk up, and the younger one—who looks about 7 years old—yells, “Go through mine, go through mine!” Then she gives me a hug.
Right inside, there’s a table with a purple sign that says, “The Salt & Light Ministry Biblical Citizenship”—a project that encourages churchgoers to contact their elected representatives about a different policy issue every month. It’s affiliated with the Liberty Counsel, the group that represents Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis. This is no accident, since Farris Wilks supports Liberty Counsel (according to Reuters, which reports he’s given the group $1.5 million).
Cruz recently told backers at a private Manhattan fundraising event that marriage wasn’t one of his top three issues, but it gets top billing at his benefactor’s church. There is a section for topics they always pray for—the Peace of Jerusalem, All Brethren Everywhere, Hopeful Couples (“Yahweh’s blessings for couples eagerly awaiting children”), as well as young people, pregnant women, and the unemployed. Then there are a few new items: attendees who are ill, facing surgery, or recovering from it. And finally, there is a list of continued prayers, including about two dozen people from the area facing various health problems.
Then there’s an entry for Obergefell v. Hodges.
“The Supreme Court has issued a ruling recognizing homosexual marriage in the United States, thereby forcing all states to issue marriage licenses to homosexual couples within their states, and recognize as valid homosexual marriages issued in other states,” it reads. “Please pray for our nation as we enter a time of upheaval, and pray for those public officials who are fighting to maintain their religious beliefs. (7/4/15)”
And, finally, there’s the space for Kim Davis.
“Kim Davis, the County Clerk of Rowan County, KY, was jailed on 9/3 for Contempt of Court after refusing to issue same sex marriage licenses,” it says. “Liberty Counsel is representing Mrs. Davis. Many other government officials are also refusing to comply with the supreme court decision, however Mrs. Davis is the first to be jailed for her convictions. (9/5/15)”
Like Kim Davis’s Apostolic Pentecostal Church, the Assembly of Yahweh rejects the doctrine of the trinity—that God is one but exists as three persons, the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit. Instead, the church teaches that Yahweh is the only god and that Yahshuah (Jesus), is a separate being. (Davis’s denomination teaches that Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and God are different names for the same being—also a rejection of trinitarian doctrine, but in a different way.)
Though their theology isn’t identical, Davis and Wilks share a committed opposition to same-sex marriage. According to sermons transcribed by the liberal group Right Wing Watch, Wilks has preached that LGBT people endanger children.
“If we all took on this lifestyle, all humanity would perish in one generation,” he said in one sermon. “So this lifestyle is a predatorial lifestyle, in that they need your children and straight people having kids to fulfill their sexual habits. They can’t do it by their self. They want your children… But we’re in a war for our children. They want your children. So what will you teach your children? A strong family is the last defense.”
The Assembly of Yahweh’s teachings on Israel and Jewishness are also interesting. A pamphlet called Doctrinal Points says, “[We believe] That the true religion is Jewish (not a Gentile religion)… [T]he Gentiles must be adopted into the Commonwealth of Israel. This is done by baptism into Yahshua.”
The pamphlet says that the congregation does not observe “the religious holidays of the Gentiles”—including Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day, and Halloween. Instead, they celebrate feasts mentioned in the Old Testament. In particular, the congregation sleeps outside in tents or campers for a week in the spring to celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and again for a week in the fall to celebrate the Feast of the Tabernacle. Ruth York, a member of the congregation, said the weeklong celebrations take place on church property and include bounce-houses for kids, cookouts, and softball games.
They follow the Old Testament teachings on eating laid out in Leviticus 11, which means no pork and no shellfish. And the church teaches “[t]hat homosexuality is a serious crime—a very grievous sin.” So is getting drunk. “It is debauchery,” the pamphlet on doctrine says. “Drunkenness is classed with such grievous crimes as robbery, sexual perverts, adultery, and idolatry. Do not be deceived; no drunkard will enter the kingdom of Yahweh.”
They worship on Saturdays. Farris Wilks’s parents, Voy and Myrtle Wilks, were founding members of the church back in 1947, according to a separate pamphlet on the congregation’s history. Farris is now the congregation’s pastor.
Besides its literal reading of much of the Old Testament, the church also distinguishes itself in its political advocacy. Beside the bulletins is a pamphlet from a group called Stand Up Texas, praising Molly Criner—a clerk of Irion County who issued a declaration this summer through Liberty Counsel promising to refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
The church service itself—kicked off with three blasts of a shofar by a teen named Isaac—was largely apolitical. There are tons more kids and no Sunday school, so the sanctuary is filled with their muffled hum—coloring in their bulletins, crying, pushing their siblings, giggling, and wandering about. A towheaded toddler in the row in front of me keeps herself busy with a pink plastic castle. At one point during opening worship songs, an orange ball bounces across the aisle. It’s taken in stride.
After the service wrapped up, an announcer noted that it was Salt & Light Sunday, which comes once a month. York explained that the congregation became part of the ministry several months ago—a project affiliated with the Liberty Counsel (which works with Davis and Criner). Churches that participate in the Salt & Light ministry have a table set up once a month that encourages attendees to call or write postcards to their representatives—in the state legislature and in Washington—about a different topics. This month, one focus is the Texas Advance Directives Act, a law that affects end-of-life care decisions. York, the volunteer liaison for Salt & Light, tells congregants that the law means hospitals could “pull the plug” on patients against their expressly stated wishes.
Then Jo Ann Wilks, Farris’s wife, stands up for a quick interjection, frustrated with the quality-of-life rationale she says is sometimes used in these situations.
“We will put away murderers that do horrific crimes, and pay for their pathetic quality of life, and they have no qualms about that,” she said.
It’s not just end-of-life issues. Visitors to the Salt & Light table were also encouraged to write their representatives about the transgender bathroom debate, as well as to urge their representatives to call for public hearings on the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. If that wasn’t enough to keep Salt & Lighters busy, a bulletin insert also suggested that the recent Paris climate change deal could mean we are “misusing our yah-given dominion.”
That refers to a verse in Genesis where God calls on Adam and Eve to have dominion over the Earth—a passage often cited by opponents of laws designed to curb climate change.
“Man, created in Yahweh’s image, is to exercise dominion over all the earth,” the insert says. “Yet disagreements in the scientific community give pause concerning the wisdom of the recently-adopted climate change accord.”
An attached postcard encourages members to write to their representatives asking for public hearings on the Paris deal.
The program is an innovative way for conservative Christian pastors to keep their congregations engaged with policy issues even when Donald Trump isn’t yelling about them. It won’t result in the instant materialization of Cruz’s Christian soldiers. But it—and Assembly of Yahweh—is a reminder that though the Christian right has been set back on its heels for the past eight years or so, it’s far from cowed.
“We are not called to isolation,” the pastor said. “We are called to change the world.”
By: Betsy Woodruff, The Daily Beast, January 4, 2015
“Just Being A Strong Conservative Doesn’t Help The Party”: Cruz And Rubio Engage In Battle For Nevada Mormons
Deep divisions among Nevada Republicans over a $1 billion tax increase pushed by the state’s Republican governor are helping to shape the battle between Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas to win this state’s presidential caucuses — the first nominating contest in the West.
Rubio’s backers are eagerly eyeing Nevada as they look for an early-voting state the candidate could win. Although Rubio is widely seen as one of the leading contenders for the GOP nomination, the early primary states mostly look unpromising for him.
Cruz, by contrast, leads the polls in Iowa, which holds the first contest of the season on Feb. 1, and is well-positioned in several other conservative states that hold early contests.
With the stakes high here, the two freshman senators are vying to gain the support of a key voting bloc within the state’s GOP — members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who mostly lined up behind fellow Mormon Mitt Romney in the last two election cycles.
Mormons make up only about 4 percent of the state’s population, but their influence in Nevada’s Republican caucuses is much greater. In 2008 and 2012, members of the church accounted for nearly a quarter of Republican caucusgoers, entrance polls showed.
Both Cruz and Rubio — who attended an LDS church in Las Vegas in his youth — have enlisted politically prominent members of the church, and now the fault line on taxes that split the state’s Republicans this spring and summer has come to the forefront.
Rubio’s side includes prominent backers of the tax increase, aimed at expanding the state’s budget for schools, which Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval pushed through the GOP-controlled Legislature in May and June. The tax hike, the largest in state history, was strongly opposed by a large portion of the Republicans in the Legislature.
Also among Rubio’s backers is Bruce Woodbury, a Mormon and former Clark County commissioner who is so admired in southern Nevada that the I-215 beltway around Las Vegas is named after him.
Four years ago, Woodbury appeared in radio advertisements urging supporters to vote for Romney. He plans a similar effort this cycle for Rubio, working alongside the campaign’s state director, Lt. Gov. Mark Hutchison — another prominent Mormon — to build support ahead of the Feb. 23 caucuses.
“An essential factor is winning the election in November,” Woodbury said after a recent Rubio rally in a hotel ballroom a short drive from the Las Vegas Strip. “He has all the essentials: a powerful life story, he’s moderate — he can appeal to all segments of the electorate.”
His son, Boulder City Mayor Rod Woodbury, and two City Council members — all church members — also back Rubio.
Among the leaders of the opposition to the tax increase was Assemblyman Ira Hansen, a Republican who represents Sparks, just east of Reno. Hansen, also a Mormon church member, is now part of Cruz’s state leadership team.
“You see it at the national level and here: Cruz folks are much more conservative than Rubio’s,” said Hansen. “When it comes to social issues, when it comes to tax increases, if you’re a conservative — a true conservative — then Ted Cruz is your candidate.
“I think that Mormons and just Republicans in general want a true conservative who will stand for conservative values in Washington, D.C.,” he said.
Hansen says Rubio’s past support of bipartisan immigration reform, which included a path to citizenship for those in the country illegally, is also a negative for him in the state’s caucuses. It’s an issue on which Cruz has repeatedly assailed Rubio, saying that the Florida senator supports “amnesty” for those who have violated immigration laws.
Rubio’s campaign has two field offices in the state — one in Las Vegas, the other in Reno — and nearly a dozen paid staffers. The Cruz campaign has a similar infrastructure.
Cruz has enlisted Paul Workman, a former bishop in the Mormon church and a member of Romney’s 2012 Nevada finance committee, who says his job is to make sure LDS members know about Cruz’s record as a conservative.
Cruz “talks about his faith with confidence and how it guides him,” Workman said. “There’s a real openness to other faiths that he has. It appeals to me and I’m sure other Mormons as well.”
At a recent religious round table in Las Vegas hosted by the Cruz campaign, Workman spoke with evangelical Christian pastor Rafael Cruz, the Texas senator’s father. The two talked about Mormon doctrine — of salvation, atonement and family — and how to appeal to LDS voters. Workman says he was impressed by the elder Cruz’s knowledge of Mormonism, which he says will help bolster the senator’s LDS support.
Rubio supporters, however, say Cruz’s brand of staunch conservatism will not help the party win in November.
Heidi Wixom, a mother of six, lives a few blocks from a Mormon church in her eastside Las Vegas neighborhood. After rallying behind Romney in the last two elections, she remained torn for much of the summer and fall about which candidate to back. Electability in November was vital in her decision to support Rubio, she said.
“Just being a strong conservative doesn’t help the party,” she said. “You have to have shown you can work alongside Democrats; even if right now that doesn’t seem ideal, it will pay off in the general election.”
By: Kurtis Lee, The National Memo, January 2, 2015
“Iowa Intrigue”: Huckabee And Santorum Backers Reportedly Plotting To Help Rubio Against Cruz
The late stages of the invisible primary would not be complete without reports of intrigue and skullduggery in Iowa, with campaigns forming tactical alliances against common enemies. We have one today from National Review‘s Tim Alberta and Eliana Johnson, who report that supporters of the last two caucus winners, Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, are so bitter at being eclipsed by Ted Cruz that they are conspiring to block the Texan and instead elevate Marco Rubio. There’s only one problem with that scenario: Under Republican caucus procedures, there’s no way the disgruntled social conservatives can achieve their alleged goal without damaging their own candidates, who will probably drop out if they don’t do surprisingly well in Iowa.
The reason Democrats are usually featured in these Iowa intrigue stories is that their caucus procedures encourage tactical alliances via minimum thresholds for “viability” (i.e., the opportunity to elect state convention delegates, which is the only measurement of success), meaning that support can be loaned to favored candidates and denied to disfavored candidates on a precinct-by-precinct basis. Republicans, by contrast, have a simple candidate preference vote at their caucuses, so there’s no way for would-be tacticians to loan or borrow support without hurting their own candidate’s statewide tally.
That’s what makes the NR report suspect. Are Huck and Santorum zealots really so angry at Cruz that they’d screw over Huck and Santorum to help Rubio? That’s not at all clear. Yes, the campaigns of the two former caucus winners are going after Cruz hammer and tongs, trying to exploit Mike Allen’s pseudo-scoop about Cruz telling an audience in sinful New York that fighting same-sex marriage would not be a “top-three priority” (long story short: Cruz enclosed the issue in his top priority, defending the Constitution as he misunderstands it). But that’s because the Texan is obviously the primary obstacle to their survival in Iowa. Helping Rubio try to beat him by giving away any of their own meager support would defeat the whole purpose of the exercise.
The intrigue-within-the-intrigue is burnished by the fact that the only people on the record validating the part of the cabal involving surreptitious support for Rubio are (1) a 2012 Santorum supporter who’s now neutral, and (2) Craig Robinson, proprietor of influential web page the Iowa Republican, who’s not really a Christian right figure but who does for some reason seem to hate Ted Cruz. There is a quote from a Santorum campaign official saying that Rubio’s immigration record is “more honest” than Cruz’s, but that’s in the context of condemning both.
The bottom line is that what Alberta and Johnson are reporting appears to be either a Rubio campaign plant, or scuttlebutt from scattered folk in the Huckabee and Santorum camps who actually want their candidates to drop out sooner rather than later and are (disloyally) already making their plans for the future. In Iowa, the intrigue is often deeper than it first appears.
By: Ed Kilgore, Daily Intelligencer, New York Magazine, December 30, 2015
“Marco Rubio’s Big Problem — And His Party’s”: It’s Sort Of Like Being Cured Of Your Electoral Syphilis By Contracting Gonorrhea
Believe it or not, the Iowa caucuses are just over a month away. And Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — establishment darling and the cognoscenti’s assumed front-runner — is heading to Iowa for a bus tour, bringing along a shiny new endorsement from Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, head of the special committee on Benghazi. Can you feel the excitement?
Probably not, which is why this is an excellent demonstration of Rubio’s problem, and the problem the GOP is facing as the actual voting approaches. While everyone waits for the voters to finally figure out that they ought to be supporting Rubio, the only candidate who at the moment looks like he might be able to defeat Donald Trump is Ted Cruz. From the perspective of the party’s fortunes in the general election, that would be sort of like being cured of your electoral syphilis by contracting gonorrhea.
On one hand, it’s understandable that the Rubio campaign would try to make a big deal out of Gowdy’s support, since Republican politicians have been stingy with endorsements this year and Gowdy is well-liked among his colleagues on Capitol Hill. But when Trump dismissed the endorsement by saying that Gowdy’s Benghazi hearings were “a total disaster,” you could almost hear Republican voters nodding in agreement. The special committee was just one more iteration of the pattern that has Republican voters so disgusted with their Washington leadership: touted as the vehicle to bring down Hillary Clinton, it ended up backfiring and doing nothing but make Republicans look foolish. So once again, Capitol Hill Republicans overpromised and showed their constituents that they’re ineffectual. It’s hard to imagine that too many base voters, in Iowa or anywhere else, are going to say, “Well, if Trey Gowdy likes Marco Rubio, that’s good enough for me.”
For a contrast, look at the Iowa endorsements Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) has gotten. There’s Rep. Steve King, who’s an embarrassment to the national party but is also perhaps the single most anti-immigrant member of Congress, a good thing to be right now (particularly given that immigration is Rubio’s area of greatest vulnerability among primary voters). There’s Bob Vander Plaats of the Family Leader, probably the state’s most influential evangelical activist. And there’s Steve Deace, the state’s most important conservative talk radio host. It’s an anti-establishment triumvirate, each with a genuine ability to bring voters along with them, all backing Cruz.
Of course, as much of a boost as a candidate can get from winning Iowa, it doesn’t guarantee anything, as Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, the winners of the last two caucuses, can attest. (Little-known fact: both Huckabee and Santorum are running for president this year.) But unlike them, Cruz has laid a foundation in money and organization to take advantage of all the attention a win in Iowa would produce.
If you’re a Rubio supporter, you’re probably frustrated with the fact that your party’s base seems stubbornly unwilling to recognize Rubio’s obvious advantages for the general election. By now, a vigorous debate about electability should have been in full swing, with Republican voters trying to determine which candidate would have the greatest appeal to independent voters and do best against Hillary Clinton. But that discussion has been pretty quiet, for the simple reason that the voters don’t seem to care very much. They’re angry about the state of the country and they’re fed up with their party’s leadership, so telling them that Rubio has more crossover potential than Cruz isn’t going to be all that persuasive.
So Marco Rubio can have Trey Gowdy vouch for him, but at this moment, and for the purposes of the election’s first contest, it probably won’t do any good. That isn’t to say that things won’t change — it never hurts to remind ourselves that the voting hasn’t started yet, and there will almost certainly be a few twists and turns before the party picks its nominee. But the anger of the Republican base at the party’s leadership has all along been the driving force of this campaign, and that’s one thing that probably isn’t going to change. The question is who can best turn it to their advantage.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect; Contributor, The Plum Line Blog, The Washington Post, December 28, 2015
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