Republican foreign invaders

[calimac]

A recent reminder of the distrust of Barack Obama based, supposedly solely, on the belief that he's a secret foreign agent, and, if he's not, at least his father was, prompts me to think of all the Republicans whose credentials to be natural-born citizens of These United States are shaky.

Ted Cruz was born in Canada, where he lived until he was 3, and his father was then still a citizen of Cuba, which he had left as a refugee. Asked in an interview whether this personal history affected his eligibility to run for President, Cruz explained that his mother was a native-born US citizen, so that made it all right. OK, then.

John McCain was born in the Panama then-Canal-Zone, where his father was serving in the Navy.

George Romney, Mitt's father, who also ran for President*, was born in Mexico, where his grandparents had fled as expatriates because they believed in polygamy.

Barry Goldwater was born in a territory, not in one of the United States. Does that count?

Pat Buchanan was also not born in a state; he's one of the few politicians who was actually a native of D.C.

Any more?

To any serious reader, none of this means anything. So if Republicans will be serious, so will I.

*I find it strange to consider it advisable to identify George this way. I'm old enough that I still think of Mitt as George's son, rather than of George as Mitt's father.

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've found that whole line of argument silly. I do think that Barack Obama is too opposed to some basic American values that are very important to me—but so are a lot of other American citizens, including many with no recent foreign ancestry. Worrying about his physical ancestry strikes me as at best a distraction. I have no use for birthers.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Disputes over the advisability of Obama's policies are perfectly legitimate. Dispute over how Amurrrican they are, somewhat less so. And I entirely agree that disputing his physical origin is absurd. It's trying to defend an indefensible advance line instead of retrenching at a defensible one. People whose belief in the sanctity of the Bible takes the form of young-earth creationism or denial of evolution are making the same mistake.

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

If it's any help, I don't care about those American values because they're American; I care about them because I think they're right and rational. (Of course we might well disagree about that!) I'm perfectly willing to reject American values that I think are wrong and irrational, rather than adhere to them out of blind loyalty.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

I have no problem with the citizenship Romney (and I'm with you about Mitt being George's son), McCain, Buchanan or Goldwater. Cruz is a bit more problematic, since he hasn't demonstrated that the requirements of natural citizenship apply to him. Probably, but I'd like a bit more of an explanation. One that's real, not like his politics.

What tended to slide over was Bush/Cheney in 2000. Cheney clearly lived in Texas, same as Bush. Residence, voting, driver's license, etc. By the 12th Amendment, they couldn't run together. Or Texas' Electoral College votes wouldn't be counted, or something. This Amendment had never needed to be invoked before.

A Circuit Court judge ruled Cheney was from Wyoming. Democrats, once again wimping out, didn't press further.

Still (switching subjects), you can usually tell what Republicans are trying to cover up by what they accuse Democrats of doing. When the Chinese shot down one of our aircraft in international waters and Bush apologized, Bush's brother was one of the first on his way to China. On 9/11, GHW Bush was scheduled to meet with Osama's brother.

If there's anyone who was a secret foreign agent, it was George W. Bush. Was he? Probably not. He was too busy letting Cheney still trillions from US taxpayers. But. Those who point fingers are pointing in the wrong direction.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

If Bush and Cheney had both remained residents of Texas, it would have prohibited the electors from Texas alone from voting for both of them. (Article 2, Section 1, paragraph 3.) Nobody else would have been affected.

Of course people move between states all the time, and did so from the time the West was opened. Rutherford B. Hayes, the 8th President from west of the Appalachians, was the first of them to have been born in the state he was elected from, and even his parents had moved from Vermont only a couple of years before his birth.

Typical state residency laws of the past would have prevented Cheney from establishing residency in Wyoming in the available time frame, but in recent decades they've been loosened to make voting rights more available. So Cheney's move was legitimate. And Wyoming is where he was raised and which he'd served in Congress, so it's not like he was a complete carpetbagger: he's only moved to Texas to take the job running Halliburton.

The original purpose of the Constitutional provision was, in any case, to keep electors from taking a purely provincial view of whom they'd consider eligible for president, so ever since party slates were invented in 1796, that's been pretty much an obsolete concern.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Van Buren was the 8th president, and the first president born in the United States of America. Interestingly (at least to me, because I didn't know this) he's also the only president for whom English was his second language.

I agree that the the two-state requirement addresses an obsolete concern, and I can't say I objected to Bush/Cheney on those grounds. Nonetheless, it's a Constitutional matter that, it seems to me, was incorrectly decided and the Democrats should have pressed the issue harder. Not unlike much of the 2000 election.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

"Van Buren was the 8th president"

I hope you don't think you're correcting me. I said that Hayes was "the 8th President from west of the Appalachians."

"and the first president born in the United States of America."

Irrelevant, as the Constitution says that any "Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution" is eligible.

The Cheney case was not incorrectly decided, and would have been a mistake for the Democrats to press, as they would have lost. Cheney made himself a resident of Wyoming by the residence laws of that state in time for the election, and that is an end of it.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

No, I wasn't correcting you. Van Buren just happened to be 8th. And yes, I know it was irrelevant, Constitutionally; otherwise we wouldn't have had the first seven presidents.

Well, you agree with the judge re Cheney. I think the issue flew by too quickly. Heck, there are Republicans who still question Obama's place of birth. As mentioned, you can usually tell what Republicans are trying to cover up by what they accuse Democrats of doing. So I think this would have been a greater issue for the far right than either of us.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Well, I do agree that the Republicans would have made a great fuss if Cheney had been a Democrat. But I'm not sure we need to emulate them.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

The other interesting thing about Van Buren is that at one time he was a slaveowner. Slavery was still legal in New York in his youth, and his family had slaves. As I recall, Van Buren inherited one slave from his father, who soon ran away. That made him the only northern President to be a slave-owner, unless you count Grant, whose Missouri slave-owning father-in-law tried to co-opt him into the biz, but without much luck.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

The American spy plane flying just outside Chinese territorial waters collided with a Chinese fighter sent to intercept it, it wasn't shot down.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Nonetheless, it was the Chinese's fault the plane crashed, and Bush apologized. He showed weakness, and his family ties to China were further exposed.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

The Chinese pilot died. Thanks to the generosity of the Chinese government in allowing a foreign spy plane access to Chinese airspace the crew of the Orion survived and were safely repatriated.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

The collision happened over international waters. It was the Chinese pilot's fault. It's too bad he died, but he put other's lives in danger due to incompetence and/or orders.

I wouldn't have minded a "thank you" from Bush on the rescue of our pilots, but the Chinese tore apart the plane and demanded -- and got -- an apology for their illegal action. Bush lost face.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

They don't choose interceptor pilots for their retiring cautious manners. A friend's father flew Lightnings on interception duty back in the late 60s, tracking Tu-95 Bears in international airspace coming down the North Sea from the Soviet Union. Standard procedure was to head straight for the Bear, missile radar lit up and see who dodged first. Flying close in, close enough to exchange rude gestures cockpit to cockpit was common too.

As for the Chinese tearing the aircraft apart, it's not like the US wouldn't have done the same to a Bear or Backfire it got its hands on under similar circumstances. Whether the US would have released the crew, well...

[barondave.livejournal.com]

That's a lot of ifs.

But I'll play: If a US pilot caused a Bear to crash in international airspace and we picked up the crew and ship, detained the crew and dismantled the ship, do you think we'd demand an apology? Do you think we'd get one?