Political Irony

Tea Party Senator Ted Cruz was born in Canada (and is still a Canadian citizen), to an American mother and a Cuban father. So how are birthers who questioned Obama’s eligibility to be president responding to Cruz’s desire to run for the highest office?

With an extra dose of irony, of course!

The constitution is a little vague on the issue. It says only that to be eligible to be president, a candidate must be a “natural born citizen“, but does not define what that means. Indeed, John McCain was born in the Panama Canal Zone (not even considered American territory) to American parents who were stationed there in the military, but hardly anyone questioned his eligibility to run for president. And Mitt Romney’s father George ran for president, but he was born in Mexico to parents who fled the USA so they could practice polygamy.

Birthers claimed that despite Obama having a Hawaiian birth certificate, he was secretly born in Kenya and thus ineligible to be president. But they believe that Cruz, even though he freely admits he was born in Canada, is eligible to be president because he has an American-born mother. Somehow, they ignore the undisputed fact that Obama’s mother was born in the USA (in Kansas).

But it gets even stranger. Take Republican voter Christina Katok, who attended a tea party rally to see Cruz speak. She believes that Obama was not eligible to be president but says she would vote for Cruz in a heartbeat. Her reasoning? “As far as I’m concerned, Canada is not really foreign soil.”