No matter what questions Donald Trump may be raising today, the general consensus seems to be that, yes, Ted Cruz is a natural born citizen. The reason given for this is that Cruz’s mom is an American citizen who was born in Delaware. I’m fine with this definition, but it does make me wonder about all the “birther” controversy that was stoked by Donald Trump, and others (including the Democrats who started it).
Here’s what interests me, though. It is indisputable that Barack Obama’s mother was an American citizen who was born in Kansas. As such, had Obama been born in Kenya, he would have been no less eligible to become president than Ted Cruz, who was born in Canada.
As the Ted Cruz story proves, it wouldn’t have mattered constitutionally if Obama had been born in Kenya instead of Hawaii.
It will be interesting to see how many people who were worried about the birther issue when it came to Obama, but will now be perfectly fine with a Canadian-born Texas Republican. I think we have to give Ann Coulter credit for consistency. (Okay, maybe not).
UPDATE: For what it’s worth, an astute reader alerts me to this theory:
So why all the brouhaha about where Obama was born, given that there’s no dispute that his mother, Ann Dunham, was a citizen? Because his mother was 18 when she gave birth to the future president in 1961 and so couldn’t have met the 5-year-post-age-14 residency requirement. Had Obama been born a year later, it wouldn’t have mattered whether that birth took place in Hawaii, Kenya, Indonesia, or anywhere else. (For those born since 1986, by the way, the single citizen parent must have only resided here for five years, at least two of which must be after the age of 14.)