Fuggedaboutit. Hillary gets in, stacks the Court, establishes the Chief Executive as monarch, hobbles all opposition Parties, and it’s all over.
The key is easier than a Liberterian takeover: Dump Kasich and get behind Cruz.
But it won’t happen, because the #NeverTrump hate Cruz more, which is why he gets the “evil-that-shall-not-be-named” treatment. And if you think they hate Cruz, they hate a true Libertarian more.
You heard it here first, the day after Super Tuesday, that the only, only (starting to talk like The Donald) way to stop Mr. Trump was to rally support behind Ted Cruz.
The thing about hating Senator Cruz and the demanding that he apologize to the Senate Majority Leader is that nothing any of these guys do — Cruz, McConnell, anybody — isn’t a calculation to maintain their standing with the folks back home. Doesn’t the Senate Majority Leader with his sense of decorum and wounded pride get that?
It looks like President Obama is “making nice” with Secretary Clinton in putting a stop to the Bernie Insurgency. Don’t people on the other side of the aisle “get” that?
The fact that people haven’t rallied around Ted Cruz tells you that Stop Trump is . . . just . . . plain . . . not . . . serious . . . at . . . all.
You Lib-ur-tarr-ee-uhns are on the same level as the Riyadh Fire Department. The freakin’ building is on fire, and you let the young women inside escape to the outside, even if they are in their underwear.
Sheesh!
There is one more thing to the Cruz candidacy.
Suppose he gets the nomination and he is submerged by a Clinton tsunami? Conservatives (and Libertarians) can claim that he “he had the right idea, but that (shuttlecraft explosion) didn’t quite have enough power.” Kind of a Goldwater thing, to lose with glory and with your head held high.
Mr. Trump wins the “nod”, and those overpaid political consultants are right, we will have damaged “the Republican Brand.” The worst that can happen with Senator Cruz is that he loses to Secretary Clinton and those nasty goop-eee’s will say, “OK Tea Party faction, we tried it your way and it didn’t work, how about supporting our guy next time?”
The biggest problem with the Cruz candidacy is that he’s not eligible. Somehow the establishment let him run, I supposed because it’s not their job to determine eligibility. Nor is that the job of the electors. In fact, there seems to be a hole in the Constitution because it says who is eligible and not eligible, but it doesn’t say who has standing to enforce the requirement.
Once that hurdle is overcome, and it will be at some point, Cruz will be a bug on a windshield. He won one ruling in Pennsylvania, but the judge relied on recent secondary sources (who wanted Cruz to run) and he misconstrued the meaning of the 1790 Naturalization Act. Most judges won’t make those mistakes.
I’ve argued every point he brings up with the exceptions that I didn’t know “born citizen” had been suggested and rejected as a criterion for eligibility, and that Marbury v Madison requires that every word of the text to have meaning, and I also hadn’t bothered downloading George Tucker’s commentaries on English common law (1803) as applied to the US. There Tucker explains that the naturalization acts of 1790 and 1795 grant natural born citizen status to children born abroad to US parents – except that they can never be President.
Once you realize what kind of fraud Cruz was trying to pull off, and how many people enabled it, and how that derailed the 2016 primaries, it makes you wonder about the competence and motives of the establishment.
So now they’re backed into the corner of telling people to support Cruz, who is ineligible, just so they can replace him with … Kasich? Romney? Jeb!? George HW Bush is still eligible to run and he’s got experience. Maybe they’ll wheel him out. The GOP has one star player who can score for them, a second player who’s going to be suspended, and the rest of the bench is empty except for a few worn out third stringers and retired alumni. Sometimes you have to go to war with the army you’ve got, not the one you want.
And on the bright side it would be easy to keep the Trump brand and the GOP brand separate, if need be.
Sorry, Cruz is a natural born citizen per US Code. Sure, politics is politics, and people will put up foolish arguments. Perry was indicted for using his veto power, and it stayed in the courts until it was finally thrown out. The same will happen with the Cruz Birthers.
First, he believed the very poorly researched Harvard Law Review article that pushed Cruz. That article has numerous and fundamental errors, such as claiming the 1790 Naturalization Act showed that children born abroad to US parents were natural born citizens. It actually shows the opposite, because it declares that children born abroad will be considered as natural born citizens. If they really were natural born citizens then why did they bother to write the law? It would just be saying “natural born citizens are to be considered natural born citizens.”
In his 1808 commentaries on the common law as applied in the United States, George Tucker pointed out that the 1790 and 1795 naturalization acts meant that the children born abroad to US parents are equivalent to natural born citizens in every way but one. They can never be President.
And indeed, children born abroad are made citizens through legislation, yet no legislative act can override the Constitution’s requirements of office because the Constitution did not give that power to the legislation.
Pelligrini’s ruling, by the way, I think is being appealed.
All the civics books published over the past centuries weren’t wrong. There are only three requirements for the Presidency. 35 years old (in human years, not dog years), 14 years of residence in the US, and being born on US soil.
Oh, the other major screw up in the Harvard Law Review article is that it got snarky and claimed that “natural born citizen” couldn’t rule out citizens born abroad because that would have eliminated John Jay’s children that were born abroad when he was serving as a diplomat. Obviously the authors never even read any original sources on common law or they’d know that the children born abroad to diplomats have always been regarded as natural born because their parents are still under the protection of their native country and answerable to its laws alone.
Harvard Law debased itself when it published an article that wasn’t as well researched as the average high-school essay.
George, you claim Harvard law debased itself, yet that statement and most of your argument is ad hominem.
As for your previous statement: “If they really were natural born citizens then why did they bother to write the law?” Because the term “natural born citizen” isn’t defined in the US Constitution. You have spent a great deal of time trying to define it using non-legal and non-binding opinions. Congress has defined the term in US Code. It really is that simple. But if you need research: here you go.
And there’s part of the crazy problem people are having. The Constitution didn’t define “natural born citizen” because it was a commonly used and well understood term, kind of like the words “army” and “navy”. An English natural born citizen is a person born on English soil under English sovereignty. It also included children born to English diplomats and officials abroad on the king’s business.
The arguments in favor of redefining natural born citizenship are extremely recent (and probably done at the instigation of a particular senator born in Alberta). They are also extremely sloppy.
For example, the CRS report says “The particular clause concerning presidential eligibility and citizenship was placed in the Constitution and approved at the Convention of 1787 with no debate, objection, or comment.” That’s incorrect. I believe it was Hamilton who suggested only using the phrase “born citizen”, which would include children born abroad to US parents (thus all citizens at birth by soil or blood). That was rejected as too broad for someone whose absolute loyalty must be unquestionable.
The Harvard Law Review article continued with such sloppiness and evasions. It claimed that Blackstone’s Commentaries made numerous references to situations in which children born abroad were regarded as natural born citizens. But in every case Blackstone cited, he was at pains to say those people had the status and rights of natural born citizens, not that they were natural born citizens. And indeed each of those exceptions was put in place in a naturalization act.
That’s because “natural born citizen” has only ever had one meaning under common law. It means “born here”. Parliament or Congress can grant people an equivalent status, but it can’t change the facts of a person’s birth.
When you talk about a mother’s natural born children there is not the slightest doubt that you’re not talking about her adopted children. Yet that is what the pro-Cruz people are trying to get us to believe, in effect, if they pointed to legislation that declares adopted kids to have the same legal status as natural born children and then tried to spread smoke and confusion by claiming that nobody really defined what “natural born” meant.
It’s not going to work. Blackstone devoted an entire chapter to citizenship in which he discusses “natural born citizens” at great length, including a mention that only they can hold certain high offices such as sitting on the privy council. All the Founders read Blackstone (that’s about all you had to read to become a lawyer back then), and Benedict Arnold even used his copy of Blackstone for his book cipher.
And subsequent Supreme Court decisions have left no doubt. In US v Wong Kim Ark the Court held that:
A person born out of the jurisdiction of the United States can only become a citizen by being naturalized, either by treaty, as in the case of the annexation of a foreign territory, or by authority of Congress, exercised either by declaring certain classes of people to be citizens, as in the enactments conferring citizenship to upon foreign-born children of citizens, or by enabling foreigners individually to become citizens by proceedings in the judicial tribunals, as in the ordinary provisions of the naturalization acts.
Per the Supreme Court itself, Ted Cruz is a naturalized citizen, granted citizenship only through an act of legislation. He is also a natural born Canadian citizen, as they followed the English common law and its meanings just as we did. As Blackstone goes to pains to explain, a person can only be a natural born citizen of one country, which is why we don’t recognize the children of foreign diplomats as being Americans, since they retain the status of “natural born citizen” in their home countries and a person can only be born in one place, and thus only have one primary loyalty.
This really isn’t hard. People are having to work to really hard to pretend the Framers of the Constitution didn’t actually know what their own words meant, and that the Supreme Court didn’t understand what the words meant, and that none of the lawyers had read Blackstone’s Commentaries even thought that was the primary book everyone read to pass the bar exam.
An English natural born citizen is a person born on English soil under English sovereignty.
You did read the part in the research and the findings by SCOTUS where they note the founders specifically stated that they were not following English Law on that matter.
US v Wong Kim Ark
Come now George, that case was regarding Chinese parents giving birth to a child on US soil. You are seriously going to cite that case and argue English Sovereign Law regarding birth in the same post? I’m having a hard time taking this seriously.
Read the entire ruling in US v Wong Kim Ark. It’s only about 70 pages and cites just about every prior citizenship case to come before the Supreme Court.
They are all 100% consistent in their usage of “natural born citizen”. It means someone born on US soil under complete and absolute US sovereignty. They discuss how Indians born on certain reservations under Indian governments are not natural born citizens because the sovereignty governing their birth was still tribal, not US.
Blackstone cites naturalization acts granting children born abroad to English citizens the same rights of inheritance as natural born English citizens. The acts specifically say that.
And again, the 1790 and 1795 Naturalization Acts would have no meaning if the Founder considered “natural born citizen” to include children born abroad to US parents (other than diplomats).
Under Marbury v Madison the court requires a reading where every word has meaning. If “natural born citizen” meant “born citizen” (a citizen at birth through soil or blood) then the word “natural” would be meaningless, which means that interpretation of the phrase isn’t allowed.
All of this was well understood, which is why Tucker noted that the 1790 and 1795 naturalization acts give all the rights of natural born citizens to those born abroad to US parents (who of course aren’t natural born citizens), except that they can never be President. That’s because no act of Congress can change the Constitution’s eligibility requirements for President.
It’s also why the birthplace of Chester A Arthur was brought up in an attempt to rule him ineligible for the Vice Presidency. A lawyer claimed Arthur was actually born in Canada, not Vermont. Had that been proved then Arthur would have been disqualified, which was the whole point in asserting the claim.
There is no evidence whatsoever that the Founder didn’t understand the term “natural born citizen” to mean exactly what everyone claimed it meant in English law, both in how they used the term both in court cases and legal writings. In discussing the 1795 Naturalization Act James Madison confirmed that in the US citizenship is based on soil, not blood.
Scalia would have disposed of Cruz’s candidacy in little more time that it took him to write it up. Foreign born people cannot be President because the Supreme Court considers them “aliens”. They can be naturalized, and naturalized automatically, but they can never be made “natural born” because that’s an act of God and geography.
George,
I repeat, if you are going to point to English Sovereign Law, where anywhere born in the Kingdom is a subject of the King; then US v Wong Kim Ark never happens.
You then suggest reading the Naturalization Laws of 1790-1795 and they make clear sense without broaching the subject of American citizens living abroad. In fact those laws include this line: “And the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens: Provided, that the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States: Provided also, that no person heretofore proscribed by any States, shall be admitted a citizen as aforesaid, except by an Act of the Legislature of the State in which such person was proscribed.”
Is you argument that Canada is not across the sea?
And if you want to say, “but the founders didn’t say that, Congress had to say that”; then I’ll remind that Congress did need to define what natural born citizen meant. I’ve already made that point, but can make it again.
Anyway, you seem to be a believer, and believers cannot be swayed.
You’re sooo close.
“And the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens:”
Now what does that logically tell you? If such children were natural born citizens the law would be meaningless because it would just say A=A. If they were natural born citizens you wouldn’t need a law to declare that they shall be considered as natural born citizens anymore than it would make sense to have a law declaring that natural born citizens (those born in the US) shall be considered natural born citizens. It would be like passing a law saying that all men 21 or older shall be considered to be men 21 or older.
The reason for the law is that under the Constitution (as confirmed by Madison and the Supreme Court), those born overseas (not including children of US diplomats) are aliens who must be naturalized. The 1790 law automatically naturalizes such aliens born to US parents and says that legally they shall be given the rights of US citizens. But that doesn’t include the office of Presidency because it’s restricted to actual natural born citizens, not people granted equivalent status through a naturalization act. Tucker said exactly that in 1803.
It’s very simple. “Natural-born” is a synonym of “native-born”, which is why the Supreme Court uses those terms interchangeably. The opposite of “native-born” is “foreign-born”, which includes those born abroad to US parents. If those children didn’t claim their citizenship by coming to this country by the age of 21, or indicating their intention to do so, they weren’t even granted their citizenship because they didn’t exercise it.
Also note that the argument Cruz is putting forward through the Congressional Research Service and Harvard Law Review is that the Founding Fathers didn’t understand the meaning of the words and legal phrases they used in the Constitution, and nor did anyone else for 200 years, even though people spilled buckets of ink back then explaining those terms quite clearly.
If you were a lawyer that was going to argue before the Supreme Court, is that really the approach you try? Although perhaps novel, arguing that the Founders didn’t understand what they were saying when they wrote the Constitution doesn’t have a chance in hell of swaying the court. You might as well argue that they didn’t understand what a celestial or astronomical year was back then, so Justin Bieber fits the 35-year old age requirement because the Founders didn’t specify an Earth year.
Sorry George, you responded exactly to what I warned about. Congress needed to define natural born, and they did. The law isn’t meaningless as a definition. In fact, the law means that a child born to US citizens outside the US would not be naturalized, because they were already natural born. That’s what the law you are pointing to says. Further, Cruz claimed his citizenship before age 21, for whatever reason you brought that up.
“Congress needed to define natural born, and they did.”>blockquote>
No, they can’t. They’re not Webster. “Natural born” is a phrase that the Founders used in the Constitution and one that had been in legal use for centuries. English law used it many, many times. The Constitution does not give Congress the power to define or redefine the words the Founders used. The don’t get to redefine the meaning of “is”. They don’t get to redefine the meaning of “bear arms.” They don’t get to redefine the meaning of “November.” If we let them do that then the Constitution is utterly meaningless.
Natural born is a very simple term that had been in use for centuries. It refers to people born on the soil or under the complete sovereignty of a liege. From it we get the term “allegiance.” Blackstone not only explained who were natural born citizens, and not only why they were uniquely loyal, and not only why certain offices were restricted to natural born citizens, he even explained the etymology of the term. All the Founders read Blackstone. They didn’t define it because everybody knew what it meant in all its manifest legal complexities and manifestations. The Supreme Court is in complete agreement with the Founders in all the subsequent cases. The Supreme Court said to understand the term you have to go back to common law, where it was frequently used. All sources on common law are in agreement that it excludes foreign born children unless their parents were on diplomatic or military business and thus under the complete protection of their home country (ie. not subject to foreign sovereignty). The term is so well defined that the centuries ago the discussion was whether it covers children born to sailors in a foreign navy in an English port, children born during foreign occupation, and children born to traders who are just passing through. Argument from ignorance does not work in US law.
Alexander Hamilton suggested that Article II should only restrict the Presidency to “born citizens” which includes people like Ted Cruz. The Founders rejected that in favor of “natural born” which excluded all children born in Canada to US parents except for US diplomats and other people sent there on official government business.
The law isn’t meaningless as a definition. In fact, the law means that a child born to US citizens outside the US would not be naturalized, because they were already natural born,
No, you have a splinter in your head that will pop out shortly. If Congress wanted to declare children born abroad to be natural born citizens – well, they couldn’t actually do that. You might as well pass a law declaring dogs to be cats. Once you understand the meaning of “natural born” their phrasing will make perfect sense.
In the 1790 Act, “shall be considered” is the crux of your misunderstanding. It’s like passing a law that declares that all black people shall be considered as white people. What that does is establish legal equality. It doesn’t mean that black people have always actually been white people the whole time, or are indeed actually are white people. What it says is that they shall enjoy all the same rights and privileges.
In England, natural born citizens had privileges denied to children born of English parents abroad, and this persisted for centuries. For example, they couldn’t inherit property, similar to the way women couldn’t inherit property until the 20th century. As England’s trade networks expanded they had more and more important people born abroad, and those trade networks had to be overseen by very important and well connected people. There were noble Englishmen having children in the Americas and in India and all around the globe. The were not natural born Englishmen, and couldn’t inherit their parent’s huge estates. This created some serious issues at the highest levels of government, and those problems were dealt with by declaring that children born abroad to English parents should enjoy the same rights as natural born Englishmen (babies that English citizens popped out on English soil under the protection of the king of England)..
But never did Parliament try to redefine the meaning of “natural born citizen” anymore than Congress would try to redefine “major league baseball player.” What they did was pass Naturalization Acts that granted such children the same legal rights as natural born Englishmen. US law follows exactly the same model, and even more so because the Colonies were founded by people whose understanding and experience were with English common law, not the civil law of kings and nobles. We had no use for civil law for centuries.
So getting back to the point, Congress didn’t even attempt to define or redefine “natural born citizen” because it’s a phrase related to a mother’s “natural born” child. We all know what it means. We have known what it means for centuries. The phrase cannot include adopted children, not matter what law Congress passes declaring that adopted children shall be considered the same as a mother’s natural born children.
When it comes to citizens, who are a state’s children, the same language was in operation. Just as a mother has “natural children”, a product of her loins, so to does a nation. In that analogy, children born abroad to US citizens are like surrogate children. If a US couple donates the zygote, the baby is natural born to the surrogate foreign mother, whose body nurtured and protected them in the womb. But by blood they are the child of US parents and thus can become naturalized US citizens. Congress can pass a law declaring that to be the case, saying that such children shall be considered as natural born citizens. But that doesn’t mean that such children really are the natural born children of US parents, nor that such children were born on US soil and thus natural born citizens. It means that we understand the parent’s situation and don’t want them going on Oprah to scream about how we’re bigots and racists who don’t understand the Constitution.
Once you understand how well defined and simple the legal term is, and how a Harvard law student couldn’t possibly understand that he couldn’t possibly assume the office of President, it will give you some insight into Ted Cruz, and how we should probably bomb Canadian cities into the stone age for what one of their natural born citizens did to the 2016 US election. We don’t bother them, we don’t invade them, we don’t kill their tourists in the street, so long as they don’t make trouble by trying to topple our government or throw us into chaos. They have broken that agreement by trying to place an usurper in our highest office, one who the military is forbidden from obeying.
No foreign born person, which we call aliens, can ever occupy the office of President. It’s one of only three requirements for the office. Over a hundred million Americans meet those requirements. Ted Cruz does not. Everybody knows this. Everybody has always known this. It’s a show stopper. Anyone who’s sworn an oath to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States has to follow the Constitution, which ruled out foreign born usurpers in Article II. Allowing a foreign usurper to assume the office is a deal breaker.
But who should be the candidate? To win, it would help if the Libertarian was someone who also already famous, to compete with the name-recognition of Clinton and Trump. How about Bruce Willis? If not, then who?
If you want to win the youth vote from both parties, how about the two guys who write South Park ( Trey Parker and Matt Stone) as President and VP?
You hardly need to click on those links — the main message is in the URLs themselves.
Because they’re not libertarian.
In case it wasn’t clear, I’m picking names from the lists you can get when you search for “famous libertarians”.
I honestly think that this strategy could lead to the first third party win, if the right candidate was picked. Or, actually, I think that, somewhat as in 1856, the two party system would reassemble itself, but with a replacement for the GOP at the Presidential level. But you’d need a candidate with massive popularity who could win votes from Trump.
Hmm, I am not seeing a 3rd party win until there are more parties. Right now, there are like 4 parties? And 2/4 lack national county by county infrastructure. Parties need to start at the bottom and work their way up. Changes at the state level are very important because state election systems are geared toward two parties.
It would be like a counter-insurgency insurgency strategy of clear and hold, holding being the important part.
Voting 3rd party is just voting to criticize whomever wins or comes in second place. Any successful 3rd party run would only weaken the closest party in ideology, which is why there needs to be more than just the 2-4 parties with all of them being competitive in order for a 3rd party to be elected.
It looks like we are stuck with two parties for now as things are trending toward authoritarian/fascism/socialism and freedom/capitalism oriented parties. Trump and his cross over appeals to Democrats are really muddying the waters on this right now.
A more likely scenario would be finding a candidate who could run on a party line that’s already likely to qualify for the ballot in enough states to make a difference.
As the NeverTrump folks like to point out, their too civilized and cultured to ever consider voting for Trump. You’d think that would indicate they’re mostly literate. Getting together to collectively write in a preferred candidate is too problematic? Too many spelling errors? I’m confused.
If the neverTrump movement runs anyone, take it to the bank, it’ll be a GOPe regular, the opposite of libertarian.
Why? Because who, exactly, do you think will be doing the candidate choosing? The rank and file? Not a chance.
It isn’t as if the GOP rank and file are libertarian either.
If only 19% of the American population self identify as libertarian how can their be a take over?
I am a complete non-twit so can someone let me know, is there a NeverClinton thinger out there?
Yes, but in 2008 they acted too early, and we got Obama. Her negatives are higher now, and it is much better to face her in the general.
The NeverClinton camps is being countered by the “what would you do to stop Hitler?” campaign. Would you go back in time to abort baby Hitler? Would you kill Hitler’s mom? Would you shoot a child Hitler in the face? Now that you have said yes to all of those, what would you do to stop a modern Hitler?
No, no, no we want you to almost kill him not actually kill him and while many of us have no problem with violence as long as we don’t personally have to do it, why don’t you just vote for Hillary so we don’t have to kill a bunch of people?
The choice for them is clear, vote for Hillary or start killing people or maybe both…
Reminds of the SF where a woman did go back in time to kill baby Hitler, but a baby that took it’s place was the actual baby Hitler.
And what do you think will be the outcome of a 3rd party run from the “conservative” side? Easy win for Killary.
In other words – are you people out of your ever loving minds?
Just pray that President Trump puts Cruz in at the Supreme Court.
A President Trump is more likely to put *me* on the Supreme Court out of sheer ignorance, than Cruz or any other identifiably conservative with legal experience. The man thinks that A) judges “sign bills” and B) that his screaming progressive harpy of a sister is indistinguishable from Alito on the bench.
Maybe a Trump win would mean more GOP in the Senate. Are there any Tea Partiers running for Senate this time around?
The NeverTrump crowd should just put the Hillary! stickers on their cars, it’s apparently what they want.
But I am a NeverRubioBushKasich guy, so I might end up voting for her myself, but only to nail the stake a little deeper into the GOPe’s cold, undead heart.
–But I am a NeverRubioBushKasich guy, so I might end up voting for her myself, but only to nail the stake a little deeper into the GOPe’s cold, undead heart.–
How about trump and cruz VP and if elected, see if Cruz can be nominated to Supreme Court?
That should do something to nail the stake a little deeper into GOPe’s cold, undead heart and cause lefties to move out of the US and/or cause them to become even more visibly raving mad.
It is the beginning of idiocracy. We know how bad Hillary would be.
We’ve seen this before in ’92 with Ross Perot. A third party candidacy will only hurt the Republicans and assure a victory for the Democrats. As was pointed out in the article it’s getting very late in the game to mount a 3rd party candidacy from scratch. Political parties exist and pick their own candidates for a reason, usually to do with ideology not expediency. This article reads like fiction to me. An interesting scenario that might still play out is that somehow Trump gets screwed at the convention. Frankly I don’t see that happening but if it does it would be too late for him to get on the general election ballot in all 50 states as a third-party candidate. Unless HE were to pull the trick of pre-empting another parties’ candidate. Again if so, it would still throw the election to the Democrats by splitting the vote on the other side. Maybe Trump was a Democratic Party plant? Now there’s a perfect ploy….
What if Senator Cruz makes a come-from-behind strong showing in the Western states?
Suppose Mr. Trump is ahead in delegates but his support in the late primaries is flagging? A case could be made to go with what the delegates decide rather than “Oh, I won more delegates so if I am not the nominee, my ‘people’ will riot.”
But Mr. Cruz has to make that strong showing. For now there is this strategizing as to keeping Governor Kasich around to “split the vote” and “kick the decision into the Convention.” Maybe that needs to be done to even have a chance.
Yet Mr. Cruz has to make a strong finish, even if behind in delegates”, for that reasoning to carry the day.
And oh yeah, the NotTrump people are going to have to, in Vice President Nixon’s famous words, decide to “act” or “get off the pot.” Oh, I am so sorry for you elected officials that your tender feelings were hurt by Senator Cruz and that he won’t kiss your hand like the undertaker pledging fealty in the Godfather. You are either fer Trump or agin’ him, and you are going to have some decisive action. Like, three weeks ago.
Trump doubled down on needing to win the needed delegates and not getting the nomination to if his delegate count is CLOSE to the number needed he should still automatically get the nomination or else there would be riots.
Donald Trump can bluster all he wants. The scenario I am talking about is when it comes down to a 2-candidate race that Ted Cruz consistently wins. I am talking about a scenario where the case can be made, yes, Mr. Trump has the most delegates, no, he doesn’t cross the threshold to win it on the first ballot, and yes, another candidate is showing greater strength in head-to-head matchups.
Were Mr. Trump to come up a few delegates short and were Mr Cruz’s performance to be hit-and-miss, then and only then would anyone listen to a “we wuz robbed” complaint from Mr. Trump.
I stated right here on the day after Super Tuesday that the anti-Trump forces needed then and there to coalesce their opposition. Is it Sean Trende who remarked that the anti-Trump forces are consistently 3 weeks late on deciding on anything?
Protesters have shut down the only road to today’s Trump rally in AZ.
This clarifies how un-american the protesters are. They should instead hold their own rallies. They are lighting a backfire.
Fuggedaboutit. Hillary gets in, stacks the Court, establishes the Chief Executive as monarch, hobbles all opposition Parties, and it’s all over.
The key is easier than a Liberterian takeover: Dump Kasich and get behind Cruz.
But it won’t happen, because the #NeverTrump hate Cruz more, which is why he gets the “evil-that-shall-not-be-named” treatment. And if you think they hate Cruz, they hate a true Libertarian more.
You heard it here first, the day after Super Tuesday, that the only, only (starting to talk like The Donald) way to stop Mr. Trump was to rally support behind Ted Cruz.
The thing about hating Senator Cruz and the demanding that he apologize to the Senate Majority Leader is that nothing any of these guys do — Cruz, McConnell, anybody — isn’t a calculation to maintain their standing with the folks back home. Doesn’t the Senate Majority Leader with his sense of decorum and wounded pride get that?
It looks like President Obama is “making nice” with Secretary Clinton in putting a stop to the Bernie Insurgency. Don’t people on the other side of the aisle “get” that?
The fact that people haven’t rallied around Ted Cruz tells you that Stop Trump is . . . just . . . plain . . . not . . . serious . . . at . . . all.
You Lib-ur-tarr-ee-uhns are on the same level as the Riyadh Fire Department. The freakin’ building is on fire, and you let the young women inside escape to the outside, even if they are in their underwear.
Sheesh!
There is one more thing to the Cruz candidacy.
Suppose he gets the nomination and he is submerged by a Clinton tsunami? Conservatives (and Libertarians) can claim that he “he had the right idea, but that (shuttlecraft explosion) didn’t quite have enough power.” Kind of a Goldwater thing, to lose with glory and with your head held high.
Mr. Trump wins the “nod”, and those overpaid political consultants are right, we will have damaged “the Republican Brand.” The worst that can happen with Senator Cruz is that he loses to Secretary Clinton and those nasty goop-eee’s will say, “OK Tea Party faction, we tried it your way and it didn’t work, how about supporting our guy next time?”
The biggest problem with the Cruz candidacy is that he’s not eligible. Somehow the establishment let him run, I supposed because it’s not their job to determine eligibility. Nor is that the job of the electors. In fact, there seems to be a hole in the Constitution because it says who is eligible and not eligible, but it doesn’t say who has standing to enforce the requirement.
Once that hurdle is overcome, and it will be at some point, Cruz will be a bug on a windshield. He won one ruling in Pennsylvania, but the judge relied on recent secondary sources (who wanted Cruz to run) and he misconstrued the meaning of the 1790 Naturalization Act. Most judges won’t make those mistakes.
Amicus brief filed in the New York case. It’s a tour de force.
I’ve argued every point he brings up with the exceptions that I didn’t know “born citizen” had been suggested and rejected as a criterion for eligibility, and that Marbury v Madison requires that every word of the text to have meaning, and I also hadn’t bothered downloading George Tucker’s commentaries on English common law (1803) as applied to the US. There Tucker explains that the naturalization acts of 1790 and 1795 grant natural born citizen status to children born abroad to US parents – except that they can never be President.
Once you realize what kind of fraud Cruz was trying to pull off, and how many people enabled it, and how that derailed the 2016 primaries, it makes you wonder about the competence and motives of the establishment.
So now they’re backed into the corner of telling people to support Cruz, who is ineligible, just so they can replace him with … Kasich? Romney? Jeb!? George HW Bush is still eligible to run and he’s got experience. Maybe they’ll wheel him out. The GOP has one star player who can score for them, a second player who’s going to be suspended, and the rest of the bench is empty except for a few worn out third stringers and retired alumni. Sometimes you have to go to war with the army you’ve got, not the one you want.
And on the bright side it would be easy to keep the Trump brand and the GOP brand separate, if need be.
Sorry, Cruz is a natural born citizen per US Code. Sure, politics is politics, and people will put up foolish arguments. Perry was indicted for using his veto power, and it stayed in the courts until it was finally thrown out. The same will happen with the Cruz Birthers.
How many of these decisions will it take?
Judge Pellegrini screwed up on several points.
First, he believed the very poorly researched Harvard Law Review article that pushed Cruz. That article has numerous and fundamental errors, such as claiming the 1790 Naturalization Act showed that children born abroad to US parents were natural born citizens. It actually shows the opposite, because it declares that children born abroad will be considered as natural born citizens. If they really were natural born citizens then why did they bother to write the law? It would just be saying “natural born citizens are to be considered natural born citizens.”
In his 1808 commentaries on the common law as applied in the United States, George Tucker pointed out that the 1790 and 1795 naturalization acts meant that the children born abroad to US parents are equivalent to natural born citizens in every way but one. They can never be President.
And indeed, children born abroad are made citizens through legislation, yet no legislative act can override the Constitution’s requirements of office because the Constitution did not give that power to the legislation.
Pelligrini’s ruling, by the way, I think is being appealed.
All the civics books published over the past centuries weren’t wrong. There are only three requirements for the Presidency. 35 years old (in human years, not dog years), 14 years of residence in the US, and being born on US soil.
Oh, the other major screw up in the Harvard Law Review article is that it got snarky and claimed that “natural born citizen” couldn’t rule out citizens born abroad because that would have eliminated John Jay’s children that were born abroad when he was serving as a diplomat. Obviously the authors never even read any original sources on common law or they’d know that the children born abroad to diplomats have always been regarded as natural born because their parents are still under the protection of their native country and answerable to its laws alone.
Harvard Law debased itself when it published an article that wasn’t as well researched as the average high-school essay.
George, you claim Harvard law debased itself, yet that statement and most of your argument is ad hominem.
As for your previous statement: “If they really were natural born citizens then why did they bother to write the law?” Because the term “natural born citizen” isn’t defined in the US Constitution. You have spent a great deal of time trying to define it using non-legal and non-binding opinions. Congress has defined the term in US Code. It really is that simple. But if you need research: here you go.
And there’s part of the crazy problem people are having. The Constitution didn’t define “natural born citizen” because it was a commonly used and well understood term, kind of like the words “army” and “navy”. An English natural born citizen is a person born on English soil under English sovereignty. It also included children born to English diplomats and officials abroad on the king’s business.
The arguments in favor of redefining natural born citizenship are extremely recent (and probably done at the instigation of a particular senator born in Alberta). They are also extremely sloppy.
For example, the CRS report says “The particular clause concerning presidential eligibility and citizenship was placed in the Constitution and approved at the Convention of 1787 with no debate, objection, or comment.” That’s incorrect. I believe it was Hamilton who suggested only using the phrase “born citizen”, which would include children born abroad to US parents (thus all citizens at birth by soil or blood). That was rejected as too broad for someone whose absolute loyalty must be unquestionable.
The Harvard Law Review article continued with such sloppiness and evasions. It claimed that Blackstone’s Commentaries made numerous references to situations in which children born abroad were regarded as natural born citizens. But in every case Blackstone cited, he was at pains to say those people had the status and rights of natural born citizens, not that they were natural born citizens. And indeed each of those exceptions was put in place in a naturalization act.
That’s because “natural born citizen” has only ever had one meaning under common law. It means “born here”. Parliament or Congress can grant people an equivalent status, but it can’t change the facts of a person’s birth.
When you talk about a mother’s natural born children there is not the slightest doubt that you’re not talking about her adopted children. Yet that is what the pro-Cruz people are trying to get us to believe, in effect, if they pointed to legislation that declares adopted kids to have the same legal status as natural born children and then tried to spread smoke and confusion by claiming that nobody really defined what “natural born” meant.
It’s not going to work. Blackstone devoted an entire chapter to citizenship in which he discusses “natural born citizens” at great length, including a mention that only they can hold certain high offices such as sitting on the privy council. All the Founders read Blackstone (that’s about all you had to read to become a lawyer back then), and Benedict Arnold even used his copy of Blackstone for his book cipher.
And subsequent Supreme Court decisions have left no doubt. In US v Wong Kim Ark the Court held that:
Per the Supreme Court itself, Ted Cruz is a naturalized citizen, granted citizenship only through an act of legislation. He is also a natural born Canadian citizen, as they followed the English common law and its meanings just as we did. As Blackstone goes to pains to explain, a person can only be a natural born citizen of one country, which is why we don’t recognize the children of foreign diplomats as being Americans, since they retain the status of “natural born citizen” in their home countries and a person can only be born in one place, and thus only have one primary loyalty.
This really isn’t hard. People are having to work to really hard to pretend the Framers of the Constitution didn’t actually know what their own words meant, and that the Supreme Court didn’t understand what the words meant, and that none of the lawyers had read Blackstone’s Commentaries even thought that was the primary book everyone read to pass the bar exam.
An English natural born citizen is a person born on English soil under English sovereignty.
You did read the part in the research and the findings by SCOTUS where they note the founders specifically stated that they were not following English Law on that matter.
US v Wong Kim Ark
Come now George, that case was regarding Chinese parents giving birth to a child on US soil. You are seriously going to cite that case and argue English Sovereign Law regarding birth in the same post? I’m having a hard time taking this seriously.
Read the entire ruling in US v Wong Kim Ark. It’s only about 70 pages and cites just about every prior citizenship case to come before the Supreme Court.
They are all 100% consistent in their usage of “natural born citizen”. It means someone born on US soil under complete and absolute US sovereignty. They discuss how Indians born on certain reservations under Indian governments are not natural born citizens because the sovereignty governing their birth was still tribal, not US.
Blackstone cites naturalization acts granting children born abroad to English citizens the same rights of inheritance as natural born English citizens. The acts specifically say that.
And again, the 1790 and 1795 Naturalization Acts would have no meaning if the Founder considered “natural born citizen” to include children born abroad to US parents (other than diplomats).
Under Marbury v Madison the court requires a reading where every word has meaning. If “natural born citizen” meant “born citizen” (a citizen at birth through soil or blood) then the word “natural” would be meaningless, which means that interpretation of the phrase isn’t allowed.
All of this was well understood, which is why Tucker noted that the 1790 and 1795 naturalization acts give all the rights of natural born citizens to those born abroad to US parents (who of course aren’t natural born citizens), except that they can never be President. That’s because no act of Congress can change the Constitution’s eligibility requirements for President.
It’s also why the birthplace of Chester A Arthur was brought up in an attempt to rule him ineligible for the Vice Presidency. A lawyer claimed Arthur was actually born in Canada, not Vermont. Had that been proved then Arthur would have been disqualified, which was the whole point in asserting the claim.
There is no evidence whatsoever that the Founder didn’t understand the term “natural born citizen” to mean exactly what everyone claimed it meant in English law, both in how they used the term both in court cases and legal writings. In discussing the 1795 Naturalization Act James Madison confirmed that in the US citizenship is based on soil, not blood.
Scalia would have disposed of Cruz’s candidacy in little more time that it took him to write it up. Foreign born people cannot be President because the Supreme Court considers them “aliens”. They can be naturalized, and naturalized automatically, but they can never be made “natural born” because that’s an act of God and geography.
George,
I repeat, if you are going to point to English Sovereign Law, where anywhere born in the Kingdom is a subject of the King; then US v Wong Kim Ark never happens.
You then suggest reading the Naturalization Laws of 1790-1795 and they make clear sense without broaching the subject of American citizens living abroad. In fact those laws include this line: “And the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens: Provided, that the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States: Provided also, that no person heretofore proscribed by any States, shall be admitted a citizen as aforesaid, except by an Act of the Legislature of the State in which such person was proscribed.”
Is you argument that Canada is not across the sea?
And if you want to say, “but the founders didn’t say that, Congress had to say that”; then I’ll remind that Congress did need to define what natural born citizen meant. I’ve already made that point, but can make it again.
Anyway, you seem to be a believer, and believers cannot be swayed.
You’re sooo close.
“And the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens:”
Now what does that logically tell you? If such children were natural born citizens the law would be meaningless because it would just say A=A. If they were natural born citizens you wouldn’t need a law to declare that they shall be considered as natural born citizens anymore than it would make sense to have a law declaring that natural born citizens (those born in the US) shall be considered natural born citizens. It would be like passing a law saying that all men 21 or older shall be considered to be men 21 or older.
The reason for the law is that under the Constitution (as confirmed by Madison and the Supreme Court), those born overseas (not including children of US diplomats) are aliens who must be naturalized. The 1790 law automatically naturalizes such aliens born to US parents and says that legally they shall be given the rights of US citizens. But that doesn’t include the office of Presidency because it’s restricted to actual natural born citizens, not people granted equivalent status through a naturalization act. Tucker said exactly that in 1803.
It’s very simple. “Natural-born” is a synonym of “native-born”, which is why the Supreme Court uses those terms interchangeably. The opposite of “native-born” is “foreign-born”, which includes those born abroad to US parents. If those children didn’t claim their citizenship by coming to this country by the age of 21, or indicating their intention to do so, they weren’t even granted their citizenship because they didn’t exercise it.
Also note that the argument Cruz is putting forward through the Congressional Research Service and Harvard Law Review is that the Founding Fathers didn’t understand the meaning of the words and legal phrases they used in the Constitution, and nor did anyone else for 200 years, even though people spilled buckets of ink back then explaining those terms quite clearly.
If you were a lawyer that was going to argue before the Supreme Court, is that really the approach you try? Although perhaps novel, arguing that the Founders didn’t understand what they were saying when they wrote the Constitution doesn’t have a chance in hell of swaying the court. You might as well argue that they didn’t understand what a celestial or astronomical year was back then, so Justin Bieber fits the 35-year old age requirement because the Founders didn’t specify an Earth year.
Sorry George, you responded exactly to what I warned about. Congress needed to define natural born, and they did. The law isn’t meaningless as a definition. In fact, the law means that a child born to US citizens outside the US would not be naturalized, because they were already natural born. That’s what the law you are pointing to says. Further, Cruz claimed his citizenship before age 21, for whatever reason you brought that up.
But who should be the candidate? To win, it would help if the Libertarian was someone who also already famous, to compete with the name-recognition of Clinton and Trump. How about Bruce Willis? If not, then who?
If you want to win the youth vote from both parties, how about the two guys who write South Park ( Trey Parker and Matt Stone) as President and VP?
Mark Cuban maybe.
On the one hand, there is this:
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/269306-mark-cuban-i-would-make-a-better-president-than-trump
and on the other hand, there is this:
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/16/billionaire-mark-cuban-says-billionaire-bloomberg-should-run-for-president-against-billionaire-trump.html
You hardly need to click on those links — the main message is in the URLs themselves.
Because they’re not libertarian.
In case it wasn’t clear, I’m picking names from the lists you can get when you search for “famous libertarians”.
I honestly think that this strategy could lead to the first third party win, if the right candidate was picked. Or, actually, I think that, somewhat as in 1856, the two party system would reassemble itself, but with a replacement for the GOP at the Presidential level. But you’d need a candidate with massive popularity who could win votes from Trump.
Hmm, I am not seeing a 3rd party win until there are more parties. Right now, there are like 4 parties? And 2/4 lack national county by county infrastructure. Parties need to start at the bottom and work their way up. Changes at the state level are very important because state election systems are geared toward two parties.
It would be like a counter-insurgency insurgency strategy of clear and hold, holding being the important part.
Voting 3rd party is just voting to criticize whomever wins or comes in second place. Any successful 3rd party run would only weaken the closest party in ideology, which is why there needs to be more than just the 2-4 parties with all of them being competitive in order for a 3rd party to be elected.
It looks like we are stuck with two parties for now as things are trending toward authoritarian/fascism/socialism and freedom/capitalism oriented parties. Trump and his cross over appeals to Democrats are really muddying the waters on this right now.
A more likely scenario would be finding a candidate who could run on a party line that’s already likely to qualify for the ballot in enough states to make a difference.
As the NeverTrump folks like to point out, their too civilized and cultured to ever consider voting for Trump. You’d think that would indicate they’re mostly literate. Getting together to collectively write in a preferred candidate is too problematic? Too many spelling errors? I’m confused.
If the neverTrump movement runs anyone, take it to the bank, it’ll be a GOPe regular, the opposite of libertarian.
Why? Because who, exactly, do you think will be doing the candidate choosing? The rank and file? Not a chance.
It isn’t as if the GOP rank and file are libertarian either.
If only 19% of the American population self identify as libertarian how can their be a take over?
http://reason.com/blog/2015/04/30/19-of-americans-self-identify-as-liberta
I am a complete non-twit so can someone let me know, is there a NeverClinton thinger out there?
Yes, but in 2008 they acted too early, and we got Obama. Her negatives are higher now, and it is much better to face her in the general.
The NeverClinton camps is being countered by the “what would you do to stop Hitler?” campaign. Would you go back in time to abort baby Hitler? Would you kill Hitler’s mom? Would you shoot a child Hitler in the face? Now that you have said yes to all of those, what would you do to stop a modern Hitler?
No, no, no we want you to almost kill him not actually kill him and while many of us have no problem with violence as long as we don’t personally have to do it, why don’t you just vote for Hillary so we don’t have to kill a bunch of people?
The choice for them is clear, vote for Hillary or start killing people or maybe both…
Reminds of the SF where a woman did go back in time to kill baby Hitler, but a baby that took it’s place was the actual baby Hitler.
And what do you think will be the outcome of a 3rd party run from the “conservative” side? Easy win for Killary.
In other words – are you people out of your ever loving minds?
Just pray that President Trump puts Cruz in at the Supreme Court.
A President Trump is more likely to put *me* on the Supreme Court out of sheer ignorance, than Cruz or any other identifiably conservative with legal experience. The man thinks that A) judges “sign bills” and B) that his screaming progressive harpy of a sister is indistinguishable from Alito on the bench.
Maybe a Trump win would mean more GOP in the Senate. Are there any Tea Partiers running for Senate this time around?
The NeverTrump crowd should just put the Hillary! stickers on their cars, it’s apparently what they want.
But I am a NeverRubioBushKasich guy, so I might end up voting for her myself, but only to nail the stake a little deeper into the GOPe’s cold, undead heart.
–But I am a NeverRubioBushKasich guy, so I might end up voting for her myself, but only to nail the stake a little deeper into the GOPe’s cold, undead heart.–
How about trump and cruz VP and if elected, see if Cruz can be nominated to Supreme Court?
That should do something to nail the stake a little deeper into GOPe’s cold, undead heart and cause lefties to move out of the US and/or cause them to become even more visibly raving mad.
It is the beginning of idiocracy. We know how bad Hillary would be.
We’ve seen this before in ’92 with Ross Perot. A third party candidacy will only hurt the Republicans and assure a victory for the Democrats. As was pointed out in the article it’s getting very late in the game to mount a 3rd party candidacy from scratch. Political parties exist and pick their own candidates for a reason, usually to do with ideology not expediency. This article reads like fiction to me. An interesting scenario that might still play out is that somehow Trump gets screwed at the convention. Frankly I don’t see that happening but if it does it would be too late for him to get on the general election ballot in all 50 states as a third-party candidate. Unless HE were to pull the trick of pre-empting another parties’ candidate. Again if so, it would still throw the election to the Democrats by splitting the vote on the other side. Maybe Trump was a Democratic Party plant? Now there’s a perfect ploy….
What if Senator Cruz makes a come-from-behind strong showing in the Western states?
Suppose Mr. Trump is ahead in delegates but his support in the late primaries is flagging? A case could be made to go with what the delegates decide rather than “Oh, I won more delegates so if I am not the nominee, my ‘people’ will riot.”
But Mr. Cruz has to make that strong showing. For now there is this strategizing as to keeping Governor Kasich around to “split the vote” and “kick the decision into the Convention.” Maybe that needs to be done to even have a chance.
Yet Mr. Cruz has to make a strong finish, even if behind in delegates”, for that reasoning to carry the day.
And oh yeah, the NotTrump people are going to have to, in Vice President Nixon’s famous words, decide to “act” or “get off the pot.” Oh, I am so sorry for you elected officials that your tender feelings were hurt by Senator Cruz and that he won’t kiss your hand like the undertaker pledging fealty in the Godfather. You are either fer Trump or agin’ him, and you are going to have some decisive action. Like, three weeks ago.
Trump doubled down on needing to win the needed delegates and not getting the nomination to if his delegate count is CLOSE to the number needed he should still automatically get the nomination or else there would be riots.
Donald Trump can bluster all he wants. The scenario I am talking about is when it comes down to a 2-candidate race that Ted Cruz consistently wins. I am talking about a scenario where the case can be made, yes, Mr. Trump has the most delegates, no, he doesn’t cross the threshold to win it on the first ballot, and yes, another candidate is showing greater strength in head-to-head matchups.
Were Mr. Trump to come up a few delegates short and were Mr Cruz’s performance to be hit-and-miss, then and only then would anyone listen to a “we wuz robbed” complaint from Mr. Trump.
I stated right here on the day after Super Tuesday that the anti-Trump forces needed then and there to coalesce their opposition. Is it Sean Trende who remarked that the anti-Trump forces are consistently 3 weeks late on deciding on anything?
Protesters have shut down the only road to today’s Trump rally in AZ.
This clarifies how un-american the protesters are. They should instead hold their own rallies. They are lighting a backfire.