by Sharon Rondeau
(Jul. 24, 2026) — Columnist, author, commentator and podcaster Jeff Crouere has posted a poll asking who should win the Republican nomination for the next presidential election.
Beginning with an independent podcaster, the ten choices include several whose constitutional eligibility has been questioned by many in this audience.
Some analysts and constitutional researchers claim past presidential candidates such as Kamala Harris, Texas U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Barack Hussein Obama do not qualify under Article II, Section 1, clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution as “natural born Citizens.”
One of the main references researchers cite is The Law of Nations by 18th-century Swiss jurist and philosopher Emmerich de Vattel, whose seminal 1758 publication was often invoked by the Founding Fathers as they debated the new Constitution and formed a new nation.
The widely understood meaning of “natural born Citizen” today is “born in the country” without respect to the parents’ citizenship. However, in Section 212 of his work, Vattel wrote:
The citizens are the members of the civil society; bound to this society by certain duties, and subject to its authority, they equally participate in its advantages. The natives, or natural-born citizens, are those born in the country, of parents who are citizens. As the society cannot exist and perpetuate itself otherwise than by the children of the citizens, those children naturally follow the condition of their fathers, and succeed to all their rights. The society is supposed to desire this, in consequence of what it owes to its own preservation; and it is presumed, as matter of course, that each citizen, on entering into society, reserves to his children the right of becoming members of it. The country of the fathers is therefore that of the children; and these become true citizens merely by their tacit consent. We shall soon see whether, on their coming to the years of discretion, they may renounce their right, and what they owe to the society in which they were born. I say, that, in order to be of the country, it is necessary that a person be born of a father who is a citizen; for, if he is born there of a foreigner, it will be only the place of his birth, and not his country.
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