Congress isn’t the last word on the definitions of constitutional phrases.
Fortunately, the issue will never see the Supreme Court. So we’ll get to keep having this little conversation every year until we finally nix the stupid requirement. 
Ted Cruz is paying the price for having no friends in the Senate. McCain, Rubio, and Paul could come to his defense.
I just don’t know how Republicans look themselves in the mirror without realizing what hypocrites they are if they don’t attack Cruz’s citizenship after savaging Obama even though he was born in the US.
To be fair to Trump (god help me) at least he is being consistent in his nonsense.
Republicans don’t produce a reflection.
Live by the whackadoodle conspiracy theory, die by the whackadoodle conspiracy theory.
That said, most Republicans are probably content to let Cruz twist in the wind as he learns one of the key lessons of politics – the toes you step on today may be connected to the ass you have to kiss tomorrow.
Trump’s main consistency is that he didn’t like Obama and he doesn’t like Cruz, so he attacks both of them.
I don’t think any of the other candidates were birthers WRT Obama, so they’re being consistent too.
I don’t care about the candidates. I’m talking about the voters. A significant percentage of Republicans thought Obama was ineligible to be president because they (mistakenly) believed that he was born outside of the US. But, now the very same people are leaning toward turning around and nominating Ted Cruz who absolutely wasn’t born in the US, and don’t seem to have any problem with it.
How the voters themselves don’t recognize their utter hypocrisy is mind bending.
I think you’re looking at it wrong. The faction of the GOP that believed the birther nonsense about Obama are squarely in Trump’s camp now and they’re going to also be the ones to lead a charge against Cruz, as it will help their Donald.
There’s likely some truth to that, but in the venn diagram of “Obama birthers” and “Cruz supporters”, there is no doubt significant overlap in the “hypocrite zone”.
There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as a candidate’s ego and as timeless as reactionary politics. It is the middle ground between nonsense and folly, between stupidity and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the depths of his ignorance. This is the dimension of rationalization. It is an area which we call the Hypocrite Zone.
And the reason that they claimed to believe that Obama was born outside the US is because they are racist morons and they latched on to his African father as a way to legitimize him. That’s why the actual facts of the case never made a dent with the racists. It was never about the actual facts of Obama’s birthplace.
Cruz doesn’t have that problem, no matter where he was born, hence no reason why the racists should object to him.
I dunno. I heard his father was Latino, and not even from the USA! Plus, I suspect the family is Catholic. Lots for racists to object to.
You mean like they did with John McCain who was born in Panama?
The Panama Canal Zone, which was an unincorporated territory of the United States until 1979, which meant he was a US citizen at birth under laws passed in 1937.
Delegitimize him, I meant to say, not the opposite.
Right. And he was born in 1936, which means he wasn’t a natural-born citizen at birth.
I’m not questioning his eligibility; the 1937 law clarified the situation to the satisfaction of reasonable people. Whether or not he was a natural-born citizen in 1936, a year later when he was granted citizenship / when his citizenship status was clarified, it was not through the naturalization process. Unless you want to argue that an act of Congress consitutes naturalization.
Since the phrase “natural-born citizen” is not in itself clear, though, it is possible to argue that as McCain wasn’t a citizen at birth, that he is thus not natural-born. A halfway sensible country would just make the damn phrase explicit in an amendment. We’ve had stupider amendments.
If the kid is stumping for their parent (like Chelsea Clinton or the Romney kids), then fine but if a 6 year old girl says: “I love my daddy and you should vote for him” that doesn’t make them fair game.
All you are going to do is convince people that Liberal values are all fucked up.
Until he ran for President the SECOND time, he really was a reformer. If he had won the nomination in 2000, I would have voted for him but he lost momentum in South Carolina after Karl Rove spread rumors that McCain’s adopted daughter (from a Mother Teresa orphanage) was his love child with a black woman. Apparently there is enough racism among South Carolina Republicans that this sort of accusation could make a difference.
I can’t believe we ever stopped hating Karl Rove. He inflicted Bush on us, smeared war hero after war hero and then evaporated into a comfortable wealthy retirement.
Trump, McCain, Paul and Ann Coulter have all questioned his citizenship in the last few days.
It seems like you are saying dysfunctional government is a good thing because an effective government will only be effective at doing things that are bad for us.