People, Cruz was born in Calgary. That's basically the Houston of Canada. Surely that counts as American.
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) January 7, 2016
Dana Milbank, in the Washington Post, “Ted Cruz gets burned by the birther fires he stoked”:
… Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) last week made his latest appeal to the U.S. nativist fringe by naming Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) as a national co-chairman of his presidential campaign. King, called a “courageous conservative” and “incredible leader” by Cruz, is the anti-immigrant hard-liner who spoke of Mexican immigrants having “calves the size of cantaloupes” and who was a prominent birther.
Raising raised questions about President Obama’s birth certificate, voiced doubts that Obama had been born in the United States, floated the idea that Obama’s birth announcement in Hawaiian newspapers may have been placed “by telegram from Kenya,” and alleged that Obama “was not raised with an American experience.”
So we’re entitled to savor some schadenfreude now as Cruz himself gets caught in the birther web. Donald Trump’s questioning of Cruz’s status as a natural-born American and, therefore, his eligibility to be president is rough justice. Cruz, like Trump, has stoked the fires of resentment and xenophobia, so it’s entirely fitting that he gets burned…
Like Cruz foe John McCain (the 2008 Republican presidential nominee said Cruz’s eligibility is a “legitimate question”), Democratic leaders have been happy to see Cruz twist in the wind. “I do think there is a distinction between John McCain being born to a family serving our country in Panama and someone born in another country,” House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) said Thursday…
Of course this charge is going nowhere, except to the wilder fringes, but — as in the famous LBJ anecdote concerning a whispering campaign that his opponent enjoyed sexual congress with barnyard animals, “We can make him deny it.”
Open Thread: Ted Cruz, Hoist by His Own Wet FartPost + Comments (141)