Cruz Faces Serious Scrutinyby Craig Robinson
January 14th, 2016
Texas Senator Ted Cruz might be the favorite to win Iowa, but it’s not been smooth sailing. Cruz showed he is committed to Iowa with a six day, 28-stop bus tour of Iowa last week. But despite the impressive crowds that came out to seem him on the road,
he was repeatedly asked about his opposition to the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS), and later in the week, he faced questions about whether he is a natural born citizen and thus, eligible to be President of the United States.It was Donald Trump who raised the question, and while the initial response was, “there he goes again,” Trump actually was careful in crafting his argument. Trump cited Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor from Harvard, who has stated in the past that the definition of a natural born citizen isn’t settled law because the U.S. Supreme Court has never taken up the issue.
“Republicans are going to have to ask themselves the question,” Trump said in Clear Lake this past Saturday. “Do we want a candidate who could be tied up in court for two years? That’d be a big problem.”
It’s a simple argument designed to make voters question how well they know Cruz. It is also a line of attack that may work better than you think because both Cruz and Trump are popular with white males who listen to a lot of talk radio, and thus there are probably a number of voters who may fall into the “birther” category. If they questioned Obama’s status a few years ago, they should be equally concerned about Cruz, regardless of whether he is one of their own.
There were a couple of good articles on each side of the issue worth reading.
The Washington Post published, Ted Cruz is not eligible to be president, on Tuesday. It is written by Mary Brigid McManamon, a constitutional law professor at Widener University’s Delaware Law School.
Last March, Neal Katyal and Paul Clement wrote, On the Meaning of “Natural Born Citizen,” in the Harvard Law Review.
Needless to say, campaign staffers of Cruz’s opponents are getting a good laugh over this. One name I’ve heard Cruz called is the “Cuban Canuck.”
One of Cruz’s new national co-chairs, Bob Vander Plaats, has in the past praised Trump for aggressively challenging President Obama’s nationality.
https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/100184669&color=ff5500You remember just over a year ago, people were basically applauding Trump because at least he was being bold and saying some stuff that others just didn’t want to say. And even the deal of Obama’s birth certificate, whether people think that was ridiculous or not, at least he said, ‘Prove to us that you were born here.
Vander Plaats has also been recorded saying, “What kind of leader wouldn’t just show the birth certificate?”
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https://www.youtube.com/embed/QlGX5NZX_eM]
Cruz isn’t just dealing with questions about the status of his birth. On Wednesday afternoon the New York Times published an article that stated that Cruz failed to disclose that he received more than a million dollars in loans from Goldman Sachs for his 2012 U.S. Senate campaign. Cruz’s wife works for Goldman Sachs.
His wife’s employment with the big investment firm and the fact that he borrowed money for the company doesn’t square with Cruz’s tea party persona.How will this play in Iowa? Ironically, we just had a Republican U.S. Senate candidate who also worked for Goldman Sachs. Let’s just say he wasn’t really embraced by the grassroots. In the 2010 Republican Third District Congressional primary, a Des Moines Tea Party group alleged that this candidate had been “instrumental” billions of bailout money for a big bank, despite the fact he was just a local financial advisor.
Again, the underlying question in all of this just a couple weeks before the caucuses is,
do we really know who Ted Cruz is?These issues will likely come up in tonight’s Republican Presidential debate in South Carolina and in the Iowa debate later this month. It also has some people wondering if Cruz is experiencing a similar vetting to what Newt Gingrich went through in 2012. At this point four years ago, Gingrich led the polls in Iowa by an average of eight points. He finished a distant fourth in the caucuses.
Cruz has a much more robust and disciplined campaign than Gingrich ever had, but the issues he’s dealing with are substantial.
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