Beware Untrustworthy and Hypocritical One-Term Senators Running for President
Ann Coulter is right: "Trump is the leading GOP vote-getter tonight, among natural-born-American candidates."
An important lesson of recent history that the media has been ignoring is that United States Senators who never stood for reelection before running for president seem to think that sheer ambition is a sufficient substitute for actual fitness.
It is a problem for both Democrats and Republicans.
In 2008 all of the three major Democrat presidential hopefuls were sitting United States Senators still in their first terms--Barack Obama of Illinois, Hillary Clinton of New York and John Edwards of North Carolina.
History has shown that none of them was fit to be President and all of them were consumed by personal ambition.
After the Age of Obama, a return to perfecting America instead of trying to fundamentally transform it is obviously needed.
This time two of the top three Republican presidential hopefuls are professional politicians consumed by personal ambition--Ted Cruz of Texas and Mario Rubio of Florida.
Each of them has been running for President since he was elected to the United States Senate.
Worse, each of them sacrificed his alleged principles for the sake of personal ambition.
Rubio were elected to the Senate in 2010 as a Tea Party-supported Republican.
To win, Rubio pledged not to reward illegal immigration.
Then the rookie Senator decided to break the pledge in order to become a Senate power player and joined the Gang of Eight backing "comprehensive immigration reform.' including a path to citizenship for illegal aliens.
Apparently did not learn from the mistake of President George H.W. Bush, who pledged as a presidential candidate not to raise taxes and then cut a deal with Democrats to do exactly that.
That President Bush became a one-term President in significant part because it turned out that he could not be trusted.
Cruz has a huge trust problem too.
It's not on immigration.
It's on presidential eligibility.
Cruz is too proud and ambitious to admit he's not qualified to be President unless the Constitution is properly amended.
Cruz is a originalist on constitutional interpretation, EXCEPT when it comes to whether or not he is qualified to be President.
Cruz was born in Canada.
He was a "natural-born" Canadian citizen.
His mother was a United States citizen when he was born, but his father was not.
That's an insuperable obstacle for an orignalist.
When the Constitution was adopted, a baby's citizenship was derived from the father or place of birth.
Congress passed a law making citizenship transmittable by mothers, but the Constitution has not been amended to change the meaning of "natural born."
So Cruz is not a "natural born" United States citizen according to an originalist.
Cruz's renunciation of his Canadian citizenship did not change that.
Those who proclaim the "living Constitution" approach may believe that Cruz should be treated as a "natural born" United States citizen, but Cruz has never advocated the "living constitution" approach.
For detailed discussion see "Ted Cruz Is a US Citizen, But Not a 'Natural Born' US Citizen" (January 22, 2016) (www.webcommentary.com/php/ShowArticle.php?id=gaynorm&date=160122) and "Shocker: Trump trumps Cruz on legal status of 'natural born Citizen' under Constitution" (January 18, 2016) (www.webcommentary.com/php/ShowArticle.php?id=gaynorm&date=160118).
Ann Coulter is right: "Trump is the leading GOP vote-getter tonight, among natural-born-American candidates."
Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.
Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.
The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.
Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.
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