“WE CAN’T LET HIM RUN NOW”
by Ron Smith, ©2016
(Feb. 25, 2016) — David Letterman once said – in his totally irreverent way – that “golf is more fun if you play by the rules.” And as we head into the thick of the 2016 Republican primary elections season, I’d like to add a slight twist to Dave’s quote:
“The nation is more secure if we all play by the rules.”
Today, we find ourselves in the utterly bizarre world where two of the three leading contenders for the Republican Nomination are not even eligible for the very office they’re seeking – the presidency of the United States of America. And while it may seem like a trivial footnote, the consequences of allowing another usurper to occupy the most powerful office in the world could be staggering.
All we need to do is look at the past seven years to see why.
And yet, two candidates, millions of their supporters, and most of the media, simply do not want to ‘play by the rules’ when comes to electing the next guy to sit in the chair of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan.
Since the circumstances of why both Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are ineligible are significantly different, I’ve decided to address them separately to both keep it brief, and also less confusing. I’ve written several essays about Cruz already, who is also not eligible due to his Canadian birth to an American woman and a Cuban father, and you can find the most recent one here: http://www.thepostemail.com/2016/02/21/the-big-lie-how-ted-cruz-deceives-his-flock-with-a-naturalization-law-that-was-repealed-221-years-ago/
In the meantime, we’ll look at Marco Rubio, and why the first-term junior Senator from Florida is deceiving his followers into believing he’s Constitutionally eligible to be POTUS, when the reality is that he’s no more eligible than Mickey Mouse.
As with Cruz, this really isn’t all that complicated.
As it relates to the requirements to be president, the Constitution makes it clear that there are two classes of citizens who were eligible at the time of the formation of the nation – ‘natural born Citizens’ and ‘regular Citizens’.
The two types are found right in the actual language that spells out the requirements to be POTUS in Article II, Sec 1, Clause 5, and shown in bold type:
“No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”
So the CRITICAL question from that clause is why did the Founders specify two types of citizens when most people agree that the president needs to be a ‘natural born Citizen’, even though some disagree on what that term means?
All we need is a little bit of logic to unwrap this answer, and how it relates to Rubio.
Brief Background
The most-commonly referred to definition of the phrase ‘natural born Citizen’ can be found in the landmark Supreme Court case known as Minor v. Happersett (1875) in which the Court found:
“At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners.”
So the immediate problem that definition presents is that there were no children born of citizens at the time of adoption since the country hadn’t existed previously. As a result, the Founders inserted what has become known as the ‘grandfather clause’, which simply means that since there were no citizens who were actually ‘naturally born’, the Founders had to allow ‘regular citizens’ to be president, defined as those who were part of the ‘original citizens’ of the country.
Hadn’t the Founders inserted the word “OR” into the clause and added the additional class of citizen TEMPORARILY, the people of the day literally could not have elected a president since nobody would have been eligible!
Given that, what it means is that we could not have a ‘true’ natural born Citizen as president until at least 35 years after the start of the nation since 35 years of age is the minimum age requirement to be president, and we’ve not been Constitutionally permitted to have a ‘regular’ citizen be president after the ‘original citizens’ died off.
And for the most part, that’s exactly what happened for the past 229 years with the only exceptions being Chester Arthur, and Barack Obama. Both men assumed the presidency despite being born to fathers who were not U.S. citizens, though in the case of Arthur, no one knew it at the time.
In fact, it wasn’t until Martin Van Buren took office in 1837 did the country have its first ‘actual’ natural born Citizen as president since Van Buren and both of his parents were all born in the new republic.
Enter Marco Rubio
There’s no question that Marco Rubio was born in the U.S. in 1971 to parents who were still citizens of Cuba, and not yet citizens of the United States. As a result, Rubio owes his U.S. citizenship directly to the 14th Amendment, which grants ‘automatic’ citizenship to persons ‘born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof…”
Setting aside for now the whole issue of the legitimacy of birthright citizenship, which is the popular term for someone such as Rubio who becomes a citizen even though their parents are not themselves citizens, what we know is that the 14th Amendment only grants such a person the right to be a ‘Citizen’, but nowhere does it say those children are ‘natural born Citizens’.
I know many want to ‘assume’ that, but the text simply doesn’t include those words and we’re not at liberty today to just ‘stick’ them in. And, as we just saw above, Rubio’s parents were not themselves ‘Citizens’ in the exact same way that the Founders’ parents weren’t Citizens either, which is why the Founders themselves self-identified as ‘only’ Citizens.
Trust me on this…if George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams didn’t think of themselves as ‘natural born Citizens’, I’d bet the farm on the fact that they’d say Marco Rubio isn’t one either!
And even though Rubio’s parents did go through in 1975 a formal naturalization process four years after Marco’s birth, the fact remains that they were not U.S. citizens at the time of Marco’s birth. Had they undertaken that step prior to his birth, and formally renounced their allegiance to Cuba and pledged an ‘Oath of Allegiance to the U.S, then according to the common understanding of the term, Marco would be a true natural born citizen.
But unlike horseshoes and hand grenades, close just doesn’t count when it comes to the definition of a natural born Citizen – you either are one, or you’re not.
So who cares? I mean, the Constitution was written more than 200 years ago! Surely we don’t have to worry today about the ‘Red Coats’ planting one of their own in our country, and eventually seizing control of our national government, right?
From the Center for Immigration Studies in an article written just prior to Al-Awlaki’s death in 2011 from a U.S. drone strike:
“Real consequences can attach to birthright citizenship. By way of example, Anwar al Awlaki, the “fiery American cleric in Yemen,” as he is often described by the media and pundits, is a product of our current lax birthright birthright citizenship rules, even though he is clearly antagonistic to Western standards generally, and to the United States particularly, and has no interest in his citizenship-by-birthright, except perhaps as a tool to be used against us. Al-Awlaki was born April 22, 1971, in Las Cruces, N.M., of non-immigrant Yemeni parents while his father was studying in the United States as a foreign student.
He left the United States to go to Yemen with his parents when they returned, but he reentered the United States later, using his identity as an American citizen, to pursue his own studies before deciding to go back again to Yemen.
Those who follow such matters may recall that al-Awlaki acted as a spiritual advisor to three of the 9/11 hijackers; was in communication with Nidal Malik Hassan, the Army major who later went on a killing spree at Ft. Hood, Texas; counseled the “Christmas Day Underwear Bomber,” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who attempted to blow up an aircraft before landing in Detroit; and served as inspiration for Faisal Shahzad, perpetrator of the failed 2010 Times Square car bombing attempt.
But it is easy to envision an entirely different and chilling scenario. Imagine a young man born in the United States of non-immigrant parents and taken away at a very early age, reared in Waziristan, educated in Islamist madrassas and trained in the fundamentals of terror at one of the many camps in Southwestern Asia; someone who has flown under the radar of U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies and is therefore unknown to them.
He would be entitled to walk into any American embassy or consulate worldwide, bearing a certified copy of his birth certificate and apply for — indeed, demand — a U.S. passport. That passport would entitle him to enter and reside in the United States whenever and wherever he chose, secretly harboring his hatred, an unknown sleeper agent of al Qaeda or any of the other multitude of terrorist organizations with an anti-Western bias and a violent anti-American agenda, waiting for the call to arms.”
Now, to be clear, I’m not suggesting that Rubio is a terrorist, or anything close. But what I am suggesting is that if we allow Rubio to be president even though he’s not natural born, all we’re doing is throwing the door wide open to the next Anwar al-Awlaki, and who knows where that could end up.
Sound far-fetched? Think again. Mohamed is now the most popular name for baby boys born in England, and the U.S. will likely not be far behind given current birthrates and open-door immigration policies.
And while there’s no guarantee that a natural born Citizen won’t one day turn around and bite the hand that fed him, that simple requirement was the best tool the Founders could think of to keep foreigners from seizing control of our government, and I for one haven’t seen any other areas where they dropped the ball, so I think they got it right with this admonition too. In a letter written to George Washington just prior to finalizing the Constitution, influential Founder and first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court wrote:
“Permit me to hint, whether it would not be wise & seasonable to provide a strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government; and to declare expressly that the Command in chief of the American army shall not be given to, nor devolve on, any but a natural BORN Citizen.”
Conclusion
Indeed, golf is more fun when you play by the rules, and our nation is more secure when we do the same.
The requirement to only allow a ‘natural born Citizen’ to be president, or vice-president, of the United States should never be abandoned, and had we taken that stance as a nation seven years ago, we wouldn’t have Barack Hussein Obama sitting illegally in our Oval Office today, and we might still recognize our country.
If Marco Rubio wants to hop in a time machine and run for the presidency in 1816 as the ‘regular citizen’ that he is, I suppose we should let him do that, but we shouldn’t let him run now.
Attorney Mario Apuzzo: http://puzo1.blogspot.com
Minor v. Happersett: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/88/162
Center for Immigration Studies: http://cis.org/birthright-citizenship-for-visitors