The Birther Dilemma: Ted Cruz, Canada, Cuba and "Natural Born Citizen"

What kind of goofy shit is this? Heh. Image from
ObamaConspiracy.net

Birthers and tea baggers (two groups with considerable crossover) have a huge problem looming with the probable presidential run of Senator Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz (R-TX). Unlike the fanciful, self-contradictory conspiracy theory that posits foreign birth for President Obama, we know that Ted Cruz was born in Canada. Further, we know that his foreign-born father was born in Cuba. This puts Cruz's nativity story on almost precisely the same ground as the partially invented one the birthers have foisted upon Obama.



Same Question. Image from Wikipedia

Only it's worse. See, Barack Obama Sr. was from Kenya, a country with British ties. Though Cruz's birth country also has British ties, his Dad's birth country is actually considered an hostile to the United States. I don't think even the most rabid birther has tried to assert that Kenya is any kind of enemy. Of course, Obama's real story is even better than Cruz's anyway because he has been confirmed to have been born in the United States, making him unquestionably "Natural Born," no matter how you slice it (fringy, goofy birther tangents don't even rise to asterisks here).

But it's funny, now that Cruz has publicly "renounced" his Canadian citizenship and released his birth certificate, if the birther bunch wants to be consistent, they really need to dive in to Cruz birtherism. Because a great number of the problems they had with President Obama's birth certificate are true for this one as well, along with some other problems. Here is a comment from the great ObamaConspiracy.net, the resource that has effectively debunked every single conspiracy tangent.

 . . .what they will make of these other “issues”:

* “Certificate of Birth”, not a birth certificate
* Record number does not match stamp on the bottom
* No witnesses of birth named, nobody attested to place of birth
* That red blob supposed to be a seal?
* The “E” and “e” in “Eleanor” are not on the same baseline as the rest, unlike in all other words using those letters (“RAFAEL”, “Delaware”)
* When did he ever legally change his name from “Rafael” to “Ted”? Proof?

These are the types of nits that birthers picked with both Obama's "short form" and "long form" birth certificates. It was all nonsense, all of it. I even did my own de-bunking here. Let me be clear, I have no issue with Cruz's place of birth or questions about his citizenship. But I find it very, very amusing that birthers are in this trick bag.

Read more (lots more) here: ObamaConspiracy