Thursday’s Republican Debate: Rubio, Cruz Stress Upholding the Constitution

BUT WHAT OF ARTICLE II?

by Sharon Rondeau

(Feb. 25, 2016) — In Thursday night’s Republican debate in Texas hosted by CNN and Telemundo, two candidates stood out as emphasizing that the U.S. Constitution cannot be violated.

The two, Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, both made reference to being “children of immigrants” without clarifying that their parents were not U.S. citizens when they were born.

Article II, Section 1, clause 5 of the Constitution requires the president to be a “natural born Citizen,” the only government position for which that designation was made by the Founders.

During the first 20 minutes, Rubio referred to his mother as “an American citizen” when disparaging Donald Trump’s reported hiring of Polish workers rather than Americans.

The constitutional eligibility of Cruz and Rubio has been challenged in a number of ballot objections during the 2016 primary season, which began on February 1 in Iowa, and Cruz is the object of lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Texas and Utah.

Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada to a Cuban-citizen father and U.S.-citizen mother.  Rubio was born in Florida to two Cuban-citizen parents who naturalized when their son was four years old.

The five remaining Republican contenders are Ohio Gov. John Kasich, businessman Donald Trump, Rubio and Cruz, and retired neurosurgeon Dr. Benjamin Carson.  Topics discussed during the debate included health care, immigration policy, the nomination of U.S. Supreme Court justices, trade, the Hispanic vote, and religious freedom.

Rubio stressed that the current White House occupant, Barack Hussein Obama, has violated the Constitution repeatedly.

Rubio was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010 and Cruz in 2012, both as Tea Party-supported candidates.

When Cruz ran for his Senate seat, it appears that he did not disclose that he held Canadian citizenship.  He renounced that citizenship in May 2014 after denying the year before that he possessed it.

Cruz has failed to release any documentation showing that he is a U.S. citizen.  Documentation released through the Texas Public Information Act to The Post & Email has revealed that the question of U.S. citizenship was not asked when Cruz applied for the Solicitor General post and when he registered with the State Bar of Texas.

During the debate, which at times became very heated between Rubio and Trump, Kasich capitalized on his experience as a governor who presided over an economic uptick in Ohio during the Obama years and his time in the House of Representatives balancing budgets.

Carson, the most soft-spoken of the group, at one point said that he had not been given a chance to “talk a lot.”