Washington Post (Plum Line)
By Paul Waldman
January 7, 2016
Donald
Trump is now questioning whether Ted Cruz is eligible to be president,
because the Constitution states that the president must be a “natural
born Citizen,” and
Cruz was born in Canada to an American mother. Trump is even getting
some support from John McCain, himself born outside the geographic
confines of the U.S., who says he isn’t sure whether Cruz qualifies (the
fact that McCain loathes Cruz with every atom of
his being couldn’t possibly have anything to do with this).
So what’s really going on here?
Before
I answer that question, we should be clear about one thing: there seems
to be virtually no debate among constitutional scholars that when the
Framers wrote that
the president had to be a “natural born citizen,” they didn’t mean that
he had to be born within the borders of the United States, but rather
someone who was a U.S. citizen from birth (here’s a Constitutional
analysis if you want it). Cruz qualifies, just
as McCain qualified despite being born on a naval base in the Panama
Canal Zone.
And
full disclosure requires me to admit that I have a personal sympathy
for Cruz on this question, since we share a not-so-secret Canadian
shame. Like him, I was born
in Canada to an American mother (though my father is Canadian, not
Cuban). I will note that I’ve been living in America since I was two
years old. Cruz’s family didn’t come south until he was all of 4 years
old — though if in those extra two years he was subjected
to any Canadian propaganda meant to inculcate the national traits of
politeness and modesty, it didn’t seem to take hold. I certainly hope
that, as it was with other inspiring trailblazers before him, Cruz’s
courage enables other
Canadian-Americans-who-are-actually-not-really-Canadian
to hold their heads high and believe that they can achieve anything
they want with hard work and a faith in the promise of this great land.
With
that out of the way, let’s return to the question of what Donald Trump
is really up to here. His campaign has a kind of accidental genius about
it, and one of the
things he does is to throw a whole bunch of stuff up against the wall
and see what sticks. When the press focuses in on something
controversial he says, whether it’s about one of his opponents or
anything else, he runs with it. Since his candidacy is based
in large part on fueling and exploiting nativist resentment — against
immigrants, against Muslims, against anybody who doesn’t look or talk
like you — it was almost inevitable that he’d go after Cruz as alien and
threatening once Cruz began to gain strength
in the polls.
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On
a couple of occasions, Trump has tried to question Cruz’s religion by
telling Iowa voters (who are heavily evangelical), “You gotta remember,
in all fairness, to the
best of my knowledge, not too many evangelicals come out of Cuba, okay?
Just remember that.” As a political attack, it’s both ineffective and
ridiculous. First, what is he saying — that Cruz is lying about being a
Southern Baptist, and he’s actually Catholic
or something else? No one’s going to believe that, no matter how much
they like Trump. Second, Trump himself is not an evangelical, so it’s
hard to say “he’s not one of us” when you yourself aren’t part of that
particular “us.”
Perhaps
that’s why the religion attack got a limited amount of attention, and
Trump probably be won’t be bothering with it much in the future. But the
birther attack is
something else.
There’s
a long and shameful history of candidates calling their opponents
alien, telling voters they should vote against them because they aren’t
“one of us” or don’t
share “[insert your state here] values.” Up until now, most of those
kinds of sentiments in this race have been coming from Trump, and they
haven’t been directed at his opponents. But is anyone really surprised
that he’d go after one of the two candidates
in race with Hispanic heritage this way?
As
powerful as that idea can be in campaigns — suspicion of outsiders and
people who are different has been powerful enough to help Trump to the
top of the polls — it
may not have much of an effect on how Republican voters think of Ted
Cruz. That’s because Cruz neither conveys, nor by all appearances feels,
a particularly strong Hispanic identity.
I
want to make perfectly clear that this isn’t a criticism, it’s just who
Cruz is. If he “read” more Hispanic, it would be more complicated,
since today’s Republican Party
is simultaneously eager to reach out to Hispanic voters and held back
by a deep suspicion and anger toward immigrants among significant parts
of its base. In any case, Cruz wasn’t raised in a heavily immigrant
milieu, he doesn’t speak fluent Spanish, he doesn’t
toss in Spanish sentences when he’s speaking to an audience that might
understand them (like Jeb Bush does), and he doesn’t wax rhapsodic about
Cuban food (like Bush does about Mexican food).
It
isn’t that Cruz is trying to hide anything; it’s just that the Cuban
part of his heritage just doesn’t seem to be an essential part of his
daily life and history. When
you combine that with his extremely hard line on immigration (like
Trump, he wants to build a wall across the entire southern border),
despite his last name and however he actually conceives of his own
personal identity, to many voters Ted Cruz probably won’t
really seem all that Hispanic.
But
you know who does? Marco Rubio. Rubio was raised in an immigrant
milieu, he does speak fluent Spanish, and he often talks about the
struggles of his immigrant parents
as a way of framing his own personal story. So here’s a prediction: if
Rubio starts to rise in the polls and Donald Trump begins to see him as a
serious threat, Trump is going to find a way to say to Republican
voters, “Look at this guy — he’s not one of us.”
It will be attention-grabbing, even appalling. The news media will be
drawn inexorably to it. They’ll host lots of discussions about whether
the GOP is ruining its chances among Hispanic voters.
It
may be that if Trump does that, it won’t make a difference, because
anyone predisposed to vote against Marco Rubio because of his ethnicity
is already in Trump’s camp.
But it isn’t going to be pleasant to watch. For now, though, Trump’s
target in this regard is Cruz.
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