After releasing his birth certificate on Monday morning proving he was in fact born in Canada, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) announced on Monday night that he will renounce his dual citizenship—putting an end to any right-wing “birther” conspiracies before they start.
The statement read, “Now the Dallas Morning News says that I may technically have dual citizenship, said Cruz. “Assuming that is true, then sure, I will renounce any Canadian citizenship. Nothing against Canada, but I’m an American by birth and as a U.S. senator, I believe I should be only an American.”
Looking ahead to potential 2016 Republican candidates, Senator Ted Cruz is making sure his name isn’t left off the list of contenders. But first, he’ll have to appeal to the same conspiracy theorists led by Donald Trump, who accused President Obama of being a Kenyan-born Muslim, forcing the president to release his own birth certificate in 2011.
Cruz, who was born in Calgary, Canada to an American mother and Cuban father, making him a natural-born American citizen, has relentlessly defended his status and eligibility to run for president.
Cruz said in his statement on Monday, “Because I was a U.S. citizen at birth, because I left Calgary when I was four and have lived my entire life since then in the U.S., and because I have never taken affirmative steps to claim Canadian citizenship, I assumed that was the end of the matter.”
President Obama’s mother is American and his father is Kenyan, which parallels Cruz’s background, except that Obama was actually born on American soil, in Hawaii.
It is also important to note the difference in the two cases. The question surrounding Senator Cruz’s birth certificate concerns his qualifications. Does being born in Canada to an American indicate he’s qualified to run for president? Yes, it does.
The probe into President Obama’s birth certificate may have begun as a question of the law and whether or not he is eligible to be president, but quickly turned into a xenophobic attack when “birthers” declared that he forged his Hawaiian birth certificate.
Still, no one on the left is claiming that Cruz is not eligible to run for president in 2016. If Cruz is proving himself to anyone, it’s the conspiracy theory-hungry “birthers” in his own faction of the Republican Party.
There is no doubt that Cruz is prepping himself for the national stage come 2016. It will be interesting to see what side of this issue Donald Trump and his fellow Tea Party “birthers” take now that the Texas senator has released his birth certificate. Will they defend their favorite candidate for president, or denounce him for the same reasons they did Obama?
Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr.com
