Jack Linden
“He is not an American. He was born in Kenya. His birth certificate is a fake. His mother telegraphed his birth announcement to the newspapers in Hawaii.” These are quotes from various members the tea party in an attempt to de-legitimize President Obama’s presidency.
The tea party members and many U.S. representatives and senators are now faced with a real problem. They are going to have to explain their “nativism” – what is their idea exactly on the definition of a “natural born” U.S. This is a dilemma if the demagogue from Texas decides to run for the presidency.
Why? According to the tea party, a candidate for the office of the President of the United States must be born in the United States. The candidate must not be “naturalized.” This was the argument that they used against Barack Obama before and after he became the President. Having a mother who was a United States citizen was not enough, according to them. They would not accept the certificate of a live birth that was an official document of the State of Hawaii. They even went to court to force Hawaii to release the original. Even when denied by the court, the accusations continued.
(Hawaii became a state of the U.S. in 1959; Obama was born in 1961.)
Now the tea party is going to have to explain whether they consider Texas freshman Senator Ted Cruz a U.S. citizen or not. It is not going to be easy unless they resort to pure hypocrisy.
Cruz was born in Calgary, Canada, to a mother who is from Delaware and a father from Cuba. The father was given asylum under the “wet toes, dry land policy” of folks from Cuba. The senator has released his birth certificate from Canada to the Dallas Morning News and it has been shown nationwide on television. According to Canadian law, the senator automatically became a citizen of Canada because he was born there. Is he a citizen of Canada, a citizen of the United States, or both? Is he eligible to be President of the United States?
The senator maintains that since his mother is a citizen of the United States, he is therefore a citizen even though he was born in Canada. Is this not a dilemma for tea party members? How can they be supporting the senator from Texas based on the fact that his mother is an American and deny the President the same legitimacy? There is no doubt about where the Senator was born but the claims about the President are based on rumor, innuendo and pure figments of some imaginations.
In reality, the courts have held and practice has shown that having a parent who is an American citizen makes the child an American. We have seen that in the case of John McCain and also Mitt Romney’s father in modern times. I do not doubt that Senator Cruz is an American citizen.
The tea party is going to have to give more explanations about its adamant denunciation of President Obama. They have to explain their contentions that all of the bills he has signed into law are null and void because he is “not a citizen of the United States.” They have to explain all the figments of their imagination. They will have to explain why there still is talk by members of Congress about impeaching the President because he has broken laws by declaring himself a United States citizen.
Those of us who are not questioning the citizenship of Senator Cruz are awaiting explanations from the tea party and members of Congress who have screamed the loudest. I suspect we will hear nary a peep on these explanations. I also suspect that if some of those people ever write a modern history of the United States, they will put an asterisk by years 2009-2016 stating “we had an illegitimate president.
