Bias Statement: When writing about candidates, I believe that authors should include a bias statement, indicating the author’s possible bias. So here is mine. As a conservative Texan, I campaigned for and voted for Ted Cruz for the U.S. Senate. Sadly, I now think he has been only a marginally “acceptable” Senator. I believe that Cruz is a natural-born citizen. My choice for President is Mike Huckabee, but if it comes down to it, I will have no problem voting for Trump in November.
Donald Trump recently suggested that Senator Ted Cruz has a problem with his Canadian birth. In response, Cruz responded by saying that the case regarding his birth was “quite straightforward and settled law.” So who is right?
As it turns out, both are right. Trump is right, because Cruz does have a real problem, but it’s not directly with his citizenship. It’s with the litigation liability that his circumstance of birth creates. Cruz is right, because his citizenship is “quite straightforward and settled law.” For the Cruz supporters, I want to make it clear that I am in the camp with the many legal scholars, who believe that, if the Cruz citizenship case were to go before the Supreme Court, they would rule in his favor.
So how can they both be right. It’s simple. Once again, Cruz is doing what he does best – spinning the truth. His statement about the issue being “settled law” is probably true. But as an attorney, he knows that just because something is “settled law,” it does NOT mean that there is no case. But his misleading statement is intended to give GOP voters the false impression that, since it is “settled law,” there is no litigation liability and that is not true.
There is, in fact, enough evidentiary support and case law to justify such a suit. By that, I mean that there is sufficient reason for the suit that a fair or liberal judge would not be inclined to throw out the case, as being “frivolous”. The point here is that, if Cruz were to become the GOP nominee, there would be at least one major lawsuit, with big money backing, to challenge Cruz’s claim to be a natural-born citizen. Of course, such a suit would certainly be filed in a jurisdiction friendly to Hillary and the Democrats. Since Hillary claims New York as her home, it might be filed in New York or it might be in Washington, DC. Note that both are very liberal courts, so it would not be thrown out. Appeal of a case of such subject matter would probably be heard by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. But the Democrats would fight to have it heard in one of the more liberal District Courts of Appeals. In a case filed in New York, they would fight to have an appeal heard by the 2nd Circuit and in a case filed in DC, it would be the DC Appeals Court.
All that fighting would take time, which would be during election season. So what all this means is that, although Cruz would ultimately win, such a case would almost certainly not be settled in Cruz’s favor before getting to the Supreme Court. It follows then that such a suit could not be settled before the general election. In fact, it could take more than a year, even if it were to be fast-tracked through the courts. Of course, if there was an attempt to fast-track it, that move would be fought by the Democrats.
The important point here is that a citizenship suit would be a shadow, hanging over Cruz’s entire campaign. Worse, the legacy media would use that suit to attack Cruz, with the same resolve that they showed when protecting Obama from similar accusations. Cruz would talk about issues, but all that would be heard in the media would be talk about the lawsuit. Instead of reporting on how Cruz conclusively exposed one of Hillary’s lies, the news programs would be interviewing liberal legal scholars about whether or not Cruz was qualified to be President. Every time Cruz appeared on a news program, the hosts would make sure that he would spend almost all of his time talking about his citizenship and little to no time would be spent on the real issues. It would be just the opposite of what they did with Obama.
Think about it… Think about the media… Don’t try to fool yourself. You know this is exactly how it would play out.
The swing voters, who are most important in every election, would be maneuvered into worrying more about Cruz’s citizenship, than Hillary’s lies. They would be indoctrinated to believe that, if Cruz were to be elected, he might be ruled ineligible a year or two later and that would create a constitutional crisis, since it would mean that all of the bills, Executive Orders, and Presidential Decision Directives that he signed would become instantly null and void. What if he had signed a treaty? Many swing voters would not want to take that risk, so they would vote for Hillary or vote third party.
Then consider that a head-to-head race between Cruz and Hillary would be tight, to begin with. Only a few points or even fractions of points would separate them. The effects of such a suit, though marginal, would be more than enough to shift the vote by those few points and give the race handily to Hillary.
What bothers me about this scenario is that Cruz surely knows how this will have to play out and yet, he is still running. It’s not like he doesn’t know how the Democrats and the media operate. Instead, it’s as if he is running for President in 2020 and wants to get such a suit filed in this election season. I just find that very difficult to accept. Granted, in the time since I campaigned for Cruz, for the U.S. Senate, I have learned not to believe any of his campaign promises. But even so, I cannot believe that he is so mercenary that he would intentionally sacrifice the presidency to Hillary, just so he can get such a suit filed and out of the way before he runs in 2020. On the other hand, I was wrong about him, when I campaigned for him in 2012. Either way, it certainly doesn’t give me a warm fuzzy feeling about him.
The worst case scenario for the GOP, would be a Cruz nomination, since, as Trump suggests, his citizenship would certainly be challenged in court and in the media. The shadow of such a suit would doom his general election candidacy. Fortunately, Trump is so far ahead that Cruz doesn’t stand a chance of winning the nomination. Unfortunately, this means that Trump will be our next President. But, like most conservatives, I can live with a Trump presidency a lot better than I can live with giving the nomination to a candidate who carries with him so much litigation liability that it would hand the White House to Hillary, on a platter.
What this all boils down to is that, while both Trump and Cruz told the truth, Trump’s truth made a valid point and Cruz’s truth was all spin. Cruz has a serious problem related to the circumstance of his birth and it’s not citizenship. It’s litigation and how the legacy media will certainly use that litigation to ruin his chances against Hillary.
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