Why has the question about President Obama's birthplace and citizenship been raised so often?
First, he's black. And to some people, consciously or unconsciously, that bothers them.Second, the nature of politics in the US has devolved into something were instead of looking for common ground and areas we can all agree on in order to get movement, it's much more about personal destruction. Instead of looking for areas they can work with Obama on, most of the GOP members of Congress have viewed this as a need to oppose on every issue (which has even resulted in the GOP opposing a tax cut or opposing paying troops during war time or opposing the funding of a program that brought in money and reduced the deficit).Third, one element of the GOP talks in terms of "taking back our country". Their collective mindset is that somehow we were all cheated/scammed, there is some kind of conspiracy b/c it's impossible that the majority of REAL Americans would actually vote for Obama (not just once but twice!) so there must be something nefarious going on. And some kind of grand government conspiracy to cheat and get Obama in (and it all starts with forging his birth information and moves on to a range of other things...covering up Benghazi, forced abortions, setting up death panels that will kill opponents of Obama, removing religion from our life, making deals with our enemies so they can secretly take over America, starting wars with our enemies without Congressional approval, running a covert dictatorship that is plotting to run all elements of American life, being a do-nothing weak excuse for a President who only plays golf, banning incandescent lightbulbs, getting ready to arrest every firearms owner and ban all guns, making birth control mandatory for 12 and 13 year old girls so they'll start having sex earlier). I could go on....but these are all "facts" that have been printed in various right-wing sources. So if you believe there is a conspiracy of sorts, than the idea of a forged birth with a master plan to put a manchurian candidate in the White House makes perfect sense.Fourth, it's much easier mentally to just believe the "other side" cheated rather than analyze why it is that candidates on "your side" advocating the positions you believe in got their butts collectively kicked two Presidential elections in a row. Even in the 2014 mid-term elections (where the GOP is supposed to have won by a significant landslide thus offering a referendum on Obama), Democratic candidates for the House got nearly 500,000 more votes than did GOP candidates.
Birthers: you know that even IF Obama were born in Kenya, he'd still be an American citizen?
His mother was an American citizen, so he would have been an American citizen no matter where he was born. The ONLY case where being born on US territory or not makes a difference is qualification for President. So you're arguing that Obama's parents knew that he was going to run for President, and so put the birth announcements in the Honolulu newspapers so that he could run for President. The knew this would be an issue when he ran for President (the only time it would matter) but they couldn't arrange for him to be born in the US? Or was his mother not actually his mother?
How is Ted Cruz's birthplace (Canada) going to affect his candidacy?
We'll have to see, but probably not much. Many are now saying that, so long as you're born to a U.S. citizen, you could be born on Pluto and it wouldn't particularly matter. Of course, the hyperventilation about Obama focused purely on the allegation that he was born outside of U.S. soil, thereby (supposedly) automatically disqualifying him from even being considered for office. There was no discussion of his parents' status; the holy grail was (and is) a birth certificate with anything other than the U.S. on it. Now, it is incontrovertibly known that Cruz was born in Canada (Calgary) which, despite the similarities, is decidedly not American soil. But because he's conservative, and because he was born in such a white...excuse me, non-threatening country, I suspect that we're going to see a lot more nuance and open-mindedness in any discussion of Cruz's origin. The left is constitutionally incapable of making xenophobic appeals: their weaknesses lie elsewhere. So if the far-right is okay with it we're not going to hear much about it. Its only cache is going to be in liberals pointing out how and why a suspected foreign-born candidate got so much grief from conservatives, while a confirmed foreign-born candidate elicits barely a snort. All of this, by the way, is assuming he even gets the nomination.
Would Hillary Clinton have won the 2016 election against Ted Cruz?
Trump’s main appeal was as an anti-establishment “tough guy” who would “shake up” the establishment. He was the ultimate outsider and his lack of political experience was in fact, an overall positive for his campaign.Cruz is also anti-establishment in policy, but comes across as too much of a politician trying to manipulate people. Trump, though he lies a lot, is authentic in his own sort of way as he has no filter. Cruz, on the other hand, seems to carefully calculate what he says so as to subtly appeal to his base.However, I doubt Cruz could have appealed to the Rust Belt like Trump did. Cruz is a little bit like Hillary in that they may have been respectable Senators and are good at playing the political game, but lack charisma and don’t appeal to ordinary people.The Texan Senator’s policies also don’t appeal much to ordinary people. Whilst the argument for constitutional conservatism might be agreeable to some people heavily interested in politics, it isn’t really the sort of thing that reaches the hearts of most people.Trump’s simplistic appeal to ‘Make America Great Again’ and restore jobs and prosperity to the Rust Belt resonated with working class whites in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Cruz’s brand of conservatism wouldn’t appeal in the same way.On the other hand, Cruz wouldn’t be hit by the scandals Trump was hit by, as he is a relatively moral person in his personal life. Definitely compared to Trump. However the thing about Trump was that he managed to ride out every scandal, and they didn’t seem to affect him much. So that argument in Cruz’s favour doesn’t hold much weight.In conclusion, Cruz wouldn’t do as well as Trump, particularly in the key swing states which won the election for Trump. Cruz might gain votes in Texas and Utah, and perhaps from some conservatives who couldn’t stomach Trump, but it wouldn’t be enough to compensate. The election was a close run thing as it was, so close in fact that Hillary won, so Cruz doing even marginally worse would have lost the election for the Republicans.
Do American conservatives know that Ted Cruz was born in Canada?
I imagine that some of them do. I imagine that some of them don't. I find it quite interesting that those that fully know he was born in Canada, of a U.S. citizen mother, are fully able to excuse this accident of natal location in the case of Sen. Cruz, whose father at the time was a Cuban ex-patriot. The elder Cruz (the Senator's father) was a Canadian citizen until he renounced it to become a U.S. citizen in 2005.I find it also interesting that many of the supporters of Sen. Cruz, who truly was NOT born in the U.S.A., are among those that decry the current POTUS' birthright and say that President Obama is not eligible to be President. Logic dictates (as if that had any bearing on how some think) that President Obama, born of a U.S. citizen mother in Hawaii, after statehood, is eligible. And even IF he was born in Kenya, his mother was still a U.S. citizen. Double standard? You bet. A Cuban/Canadian is more eligible than a natural born in Hawaii citizen. Go figure.I have known about Sen. Cruz' Canadian-ness all along, but I am not a conservative. My guess is that most conservatives that know do not care.
Are the birther conspiracies surrounding Barack Obama and now Kamala Harris hatched from anywhere other than racism?
The law of the United States, as it currently stands and as defined in the constitution, says that anyone born on US soil (with a few tiny exemptions for things like children of diplomats) is a citizen of the US from birth.Obama was born in Hawaii. Kamala Harris was born in Oakland, California.Memes like this, and a lot of folks on the right wing, really really want that to only apply to people whose mothers have been naturalized for at least five years, because mumble mumble illegal immigrants anchor babies mumble.But here’s the thing: none of the people they raise a hue and cry about are white or of European extraction. It’s always darker people, people with “ethnic” names, people whose families also speak a language other than English at home, people who aren’t Christian.But if you applied their standards strictly, and retroactively, as they want to, it would affect at least one very visible white man: Donald Trump’s mother (Scottish in origin) acquired her citizenship fewer than five years before his birth.Anyone born on American soil is a citizen. Period. Trying to retroactively redefine who is or isn’t a citizen because you’ve imagined hordes of dark scary aliens is despicable.Loud, angry discussions about illegal immigrants somehow manage to avoid the fact that most people currently residing in the US without permission to do so came in perfectly legally, on airplanes. A lot of them are white and Christian.The “immigrants” being used as a dangerous excuse for ever more militarized border procedures are only ever brown, poor, and not primarily English speaking. The people harassed and deported (often wrongly) from within the US on exaggerated suspicion of being “illegal” are never white and Christian. They’re brown, or Muslim, or have Hispanic last names.Its all about racism, not legal status. They’re trying to redefine “American” as just white and just the right kind of people.