March 1, 2015

Rand Paul wins the CPAC straw poll with 25.7%, but Scott Walker gets a "closer-that-expected" 21.4%.

3rd and 4th places are far back Ted Cruz, 11.5%, and Ben Carson, 11.4%. Jeb Bush is 5th, and perhaps 8.3% feels good enough to him.
Although some CPAC members applauded Bush's call for "reform" conservatism, others described the former Florida governor as a dreaded RINO — Republican In Name Only. "He should be a Democrat," said Christmas Simon, a public speaker from Yorba Linda, Calif.

Bush's name drew boos during some of Saturday's wrap-up sessions.

45 comments:

Mick said...

Ted Cruz is not eligible, since he was born in Canada to a Cuban citizen father. He held 3 allegiances at birth--- American, Cuban and Canadian, and can never be considered a natural born Citizen-- i.e one born in the US to US Citizen parents-- where no foreign allegiance exists according to American law.(See Federalist 68, See also Minor v. Happersett, 88 US 162, 167 (1874))

Cruz was NATURALIZED at birth by Congressional statute (8 US Code 1401 (1)). Since he was born to a US Citizen mother, he was naturalized as being "subject to the jurisdiction of the US" according to US statute.

Cruz gets his citizenship rights from the 14th Amendment, whereas natural born Citizens get their rights from A2S1C5--- the only difference is that only the natural born Citizen is eligible to be POTUS (See Schneider v Rusk, and recently Hassan v FEC quoting Schneider v Risk)

Anonymous said...

I can never understand a GOP voter.

See Paul is crazy with no experience and incorrect understanding of US values, ideals, etc etc.
In sum, Paul=Obama.

See Cruz is like a freshman bully with no brains. He is actually worse than Obama.

See Christie is fat bully, the guy you would never ever befriend.

Only one guy, Scott Walker, had experience, understanding of US, you may agree or not, but he gets US. And came second, he should have blown away all.

If I was rich white man or a woman with experience, I would be a GOP politician. I would have so many opportunities, my rivals are men who are fat, stupid, lack basic US understanding, etc.

Ann Althouse said...

"Cruz was NATURALIZED at birth..."

In other words, he was a citizen from birth.

Michael Fitzgerald said...

So he's the "Reform Conservative", and his brother was the "Compassionate Conservative". Whatever they call themselves, it has nothing to do with actually being conservative. He might as well call himself the "Progressive Republican".

Tank said...

No matter how much $$$$ he raises, Bush will not be the candidate. If he is, the Rep Party wii explode.

Johanna Lapp said...

Anybody but Bushkakis.

Anonymous said...

He might as well call himself the "Progressive Republican".

America could use another Teddy Roosevelt

I'm Full of Soup said...

Bush I and Bush II were barely average presidents. We don't need a Bush III.

SayAahh said...

Nor Cruz l

Hagar said...

All you "conservatives" will love life with Hillary!

I'm Full of Soup said...

Cruz would be a very good president but the media has already branded him and slandered him as a radical. And Cruz is a brilliant guy while Obama has only average IQ imo.

I am pulling for Walker at this time.

Sebastian said...

CPAC ≠ GOP voter.

CPAC vote winner in 2011: Ron Paul.

So far, the media are playing Walker's game, and conservatives Bush's game.

Eric the Fruit Bat said...

I think they might have been making fun of Jeb Bush yesterday on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me.

Something to do with one of the Bush brothers being like Zeppo Marx.

I'm not sure because the radio was on only because I was tending to my seedlings.

Phil 314 said...

Yeah, the Suns lost last night too.

Phil 314 said...

All you "conservatives" will love life with Hillary!

Actually, life is much simpler when you have "the evil one" in opposition to your desires.

Similar to a life on disability due to chronic back pain.

tim in vermont said...

I don't believe that I have kept the radio tuned to NPR beyond the second "Wait" in that title in years and years.

jr565 said...

bushs immigration stance is a deal killer for a lot of repubs. I'd go along with a worker program as long as they build a fence. But not amnesty, especially if it involves a path to citiZenship. Why not give me an amnesty if I decide to not pay my taxes for five years if we're going Thet route.

Repubs need to frame immigration as the anti middle class anti minority policy thst it is. And not expand the problem by suddenly putting 15 million people in amongst the pools of people looking for work simply out of some sense of fairness.

Simon said...

I've clashed with Mick often over eligibility over the years—check the archives—but his point about Cruz's eligibility should not be dismissed hastily. I'm trying to retrieve the longer piece that I wrote about it, but simply saying "he was a citizen from birth" doesn't suffice.

Swifty Quick said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sebastian said...

"Repubs need to frame immigration as the anti middle class anti minority policy that it is"

They can frame all they want, but unless they can persuade enough moderates and evangelicals in swing states, it won't do any good.

Unfortunately, anything much to Bush's right is electorally (and legislatively) impossible. Anything much to his left is bad policy. He has staked out the ground that gives the GOP a chance to win and where compromise is likely to end up.

Bush's plan (and unlike the wannabes he has an actual plan) has several conservative elements, including change in the current family bias in immigration law, which over the long haul would help a lot.

Simon said...

I think that we have to seriously consider Paul. I loathe the man, but here's the problem: You go to an election with the electorate that you have.

Bear with me here. Many Democrats live in an intellectual bubble, surrounded by likeminded people reading likeminded media, and so they convince themselves that most Americans ("the 99%") agree with them. Conservatives never used to have that luxury; unfortunately, with the rise of the internet, it's become possible for us to live in intellectual bubbles, too, surrounded my likeminded people reading likeminded media, and so we, too, risk being convinced that most Americans ("we the people") agree with us. Groupthink takes over.

People like Mark Levin talk as though most Americans were tea-party Republicans and the only obstacle to restoring sane, constitutional government was the so-called "GOP establishment." Not so; America is a deeply-divided country, and enormous numbers of Americans don't agree with the tea party; they aren't hungry to vote for the GOP if the GOP would only run much more conservative candidates more like me, they're if anything less likely to vote for the GOP because we keep running candidates like me. Does anyone seriously believe that Jane doe in Florida was all set to vote GOP if only we had picked Rick Santorum and instead voted for Barack Obama because Mitt Romney was too liberal? Get real.

It's no skin off of our nose to acknowledge reality; it subtracts not one thing from whether we are right to acknowledge that there are huge numbers of people who are wrong and that they vote.

But there's another side to this: RINOs don't win either. How did we fare when we chose Bob Dole, John McCain, and Mitt Romney, who lost catastrophically? How did we fare when we chose George W.Bush, who won catastrophically? So we can't solve the problem simply by picking people who appeal to the incoherent middle; that approach has been tried repeatedly and it has failed.

In view of these competing problems, I agree with Peggy Noonan: "What the Republican Party needs in a presidential candidate is not a centrist who can make the sale to conservatives in the primaries; it is a conservative who can win over centrists in the general election." But there's another problem. We don't have someone like that. But what we do have is a party that comprises not only conservatives but also libertarians and what Charles Cooke's new book dubs "conservatarians." And we have an electorate that is increasingly sympathetic to "conservatarianism." And we have a candidate who embodies "conservatarianism," as I understand it, someone who, it is very possible, "can make the sale to conservatives in the primaries … [and] who can win over centrists in the general election. I'm not happy about this, and this isn't an endorsement, but I think that we have to seriously consider the possibility that Ran Paul is our man in 2016.

robinintn said...

"I think they might have been making fun of Jeb Bush yesterday on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me."

If it was on, they were.

Simon said...

Zeb Quinn said...
"The problem with the "natural born citizen" issue with respect to Cruz or anyone else is finding someone with standing to bring suit over it."

The problem is whether we think Ted Cruz is so good that we want to risk a constitutional crisis over it. If Cruz gets the nomination and wins (itself doubtful), get ready for shock and awe. Camp Hillary will burn this Republic to the ground before they let a Presidential election go when there's any ground left on which to stand. Remember, it was Camp Hillary that invented "birtherism." It was Camp Hillary that came up with the question of Obama's birth certificate and filed suit through the surrogacy of Phillip Berg. So we have to ask ourselves: Is Ted Cruz so good that he's worth throwing out the Republic for? He isn't.

Simon said...

Here's the last time that Mick and I threw punches over Obama's eligibility. I am anything but a birther; Pat and I wrote serious treatments at SF of the questions of McCain's eligibility (remember that was raised) in spring or early summer of 2008, and we followed the subject when Camp Hillary picked up the idea and applied it to Obama. But Cruz is a different matter. I am not ready to say that Cruz is ineligible, but there is a substantial question there, and sure, does Mick have credibility on this issue? Probably not, but a broken watch is right twice a day.

retired said...

Cruz is a "natural born citizen" since his mom was an American citizen. Disagreeing is falling into the birther trap again.

He won't get the nomination because he is too divisive. A better Senator.

Walker '16 and some gray haired foreign policy expert as VPOTUS.

LYNNDH said...

Ah yes, be a Pure Conservative - and lose election after election.
Welcome Hill and Bill, again.

LYNNDH said...

Least you pile on now, I am really leaning toward Walker. But whom ever it is, even if with clove hoof and horn, gets my vote over Hill or Indian Girl.

Big Mike said...

Jeb wanted to be everybody's second choice. I don't think fifth place is where he was aiming.

What bothers me most about Jeb Bush is that he doesn't seem to get that whoever takes office in 2016 has to be a "Mr. (or Ms., if we elect Carly) Fixit" at the grandest scale since the election of 1932. Instead of new programs, how about running on a platform of fixing everything that's been broken since his brother left office?

Mick said...

""Cruz was NATURALIZED at birth..."

In other words, he was a citizen from birth."--

Said the "law prof".

And of course you know that "citizen from birth" is not the requirement right? We have just demonstrated that "citizens from birth" can be NATURALIZED. There are only 2 kinds of citizens--- Natural born and naturalized (well held), thus you have just demonstrated that Cruz was NATURALIZED at birth, by statute, and is not eligible.

What are those kids learning at UW anyway?
Do you realize that you just proved my point that Cruz is NATURALIZED?

Sebastian said...

"Instead of new programs, how about running on a platform of fixing everything that's been broken since his brother left office?"

That's a big part of it, sure. In that regard, Jeb's record in Florida is second to none (of the available candidates). Remains to be seen whether his fixes are palatable to enough GOPers.

But merely offering yourself as a political handyman won't do with the electorate at large. The GOP won't want a Dukakis redux and, for better or worse, the squishy middle will want to see signs of compassion and the "vision thing."

Having been defined as a pragmatic moderate by his opponents, if he makes it to the general at least Bush won't have to fake pragmatism to enable potential swing voters like AA to rationalize a GOP vote.

SteveR said...

As long as Republicans are more concerned with things like Common Core and how best to act butt hurt about Obama's executive orders, Hillary will get to pick the next generation of liberal Supreme Court justices plus a whole bunch of other things.

Yeah, get excited about unelectable candidates.

Simon said...

SteveR said...
"As long as Republicans are more concerned with things like Common Core and how best to act butt hurt about Obama's executive orders, Hillary will get to pick the next generation of liberal Supreme Court justices plus a whole bunch of other things."

Amen to that. The states are already walking away from common core; a Presidential candidate merely needs to claim no interest in state matters and hint that arepeal of NCLB is in the air. As to the executive orders, people have to get real. When we shut down the government over things for which we had public support, we still lost the air war, and so the idea of shutting down one of the few concededly-legitimate federal agencies over a question on which the public is at best not interested and at worst disagrees with us? That's not going to go well.

I almost wish that the Democrats had succeeded in passing comprehensive reform so that the base would have to shut the fuck up about this stupid, counterproductive, crap. The fact that they didn't hands US an opportunity to do it, and do we seize it? No, we continue to poke a demographic that we need in the eye over a lost cause. Smart.

Michael K said...

"Repubs need to frame immigration as the anti middle class anti minority policy thst it is"

Yes and the solution to the problem is available but there is no trust.

Once the border is secure, if ever, it will be possible to separate the illegal population into those who have lived stable lives and supported themselves as though they were Americans. I know quite a few of those.

Nobody is going to deport those people.

The Democrats see the illegals much as the Labour Party saw Muslims in the UK during the 90s. As voters who would be grateful for the opportunity to live in Britain instead of the chaotic and dangerous Muslim world they came from.

The life they would live in Britain (or the US) is less important to these political calculations. Thus we get Mexican illegal crime waves and mass school girl rape in Britain.

If trust could ever be reestablished, we could solve the problem. I don't expect that any time soon.

Mick said...

Simon said...
"I've clashed with Mick often over eligibility over the years—check the archives—but his point about Cruz's eligibility should not be dismissed hastily. I'm trying to retrieve the longer piece that I wrote about it, but simply saying "he was a citizen from birth" doesn't suffice."

Cruz was born in CANADA for god sake. Of course he is not eligible. The requirement is not "citizen from birth", especially since that category includes those that are NATURALIZED by statute at birth (like Cruz, Rubio, McCain (8 US Code 1403), and Obama).
It's like changing the word Global Warming to "Climate Change"--- of course the climate is changing, how do you think we got here from the Ice Age? But that doesn't necessarily mean that it is catastrophically warming and caused by man. Yes, one may be a "citizen at birth", but that is not necessarily a natural born Citizen, eligible for POTUS, and the SCOTUS has never held that it is either.
That a "constitutional law prof" thinks Cruz is eligible is how we got Obama.

Mick said...

retired said...
"Cruz is a "natural born citizen" since his mom was an American citizen. Disagreeing is falling into the birther trap again".

Says who? Prove it. Show me the SCOTUS case that says birth to one US Citizen parent in a foreign country makes one a natural born Citizen, eligible to be POTUS.
Cruz was admittedly a Canadian Citizen at birth, so even if she was unmarried he would still not be eligible.

hombre said...

Demographics do not now favor Republicans in presidential elections where vagina voters and other nimrods rule.

The exception might occur if Republicans fielded an inspirational candidate, but the mediaswine will not allow that to happen. They will "Palin" any Repub who looks threatening. Observe the current silliness w/Walker.

Simon said...

Mick said...
"Cruz was born in CANADA for god sake. Of course he is not eligible."

That's too facile. Constitutional language derives its content from the original understanding, and the content of "natural-born citizen" is derived from the meaning of "natural-born subject" under the law of England. In the mine-run of cases, that meant an Englishman born to English parents "within the dominions of the crown of England," as Blackstone put it.

But the mine-run does not exhaust the common-law's vow of natural-born subject. Blackstone adds that even the children of foreign parents, "born here in England, are, generally speaking, natural-born subjects, and entitled to all the privileges of such. In which the constitution of France differs from ours; for there, by their jus albinatus, if a child be born of foreign parents, it is an alien." Moreover, in certain cases, the children of English parents, born outside of England, could be natural-born subjects: "[T]he children of the king’s ambassadors born abroad were always held to be natural subjects."

If the children of Englishmen sent beyond the realm on the king's errand—paradigmatically ambassadors, but also soldiers, a point of greater importance to Americans today, for it disposes of McCain's status—are natural-born citizens, the place of Cruz's birth is important but not dispositive. That his mother was an American citizen is also important but not dispositive. The big problem for Cruz is not that in 1970, Rafael and Eleanor Cruz (Eleanor being a citizen, Rafael not) were working in Calgary, the problem is that they were there at the behest of an oil company, not the United States.

There are some other factors in play, but I'll skip them for now. There may be other factors of which I'm not aware, too. I'm not here to say that Cruz isn't a natural-born citizen. But I do think that the question is too serious and substantial to be dismissed as "there go the birthers again." Is Cruz eligible? Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, a glib answer or pat invocation of vague dicta won't cut it.

Mick said...

Simon said,
"That's too facile. Constitutional language derives its content from the original understanding, and the content of "natural-born citizen" is derived from the meaning of "natural-born subject" under the law of England. In the mine-run of cases, that meant an Englishman born to English parents "within the dominions of the crown of England," as Blackstone put it".


And of course you would be wrong again. We in the US are citizens, not "subjects", and anyone of us can be POTUS as long as we are natural born Citizens.

The Original Common Law of the US is not British Common Law, it is law of nations.
(See Sosa v. Alvarez (2004) quoting The Nereid, that upon the foundation of "the new United States received the law of nations in all of its purity". Also law of nations was referred to as "Original Common Law" many times in Sosa v. Alvarez, and also in Kiobel v. British Petroleum)

While elements of British Common Law exist in America, they only exist as far as they do not encroach on the US Constitution.

Natural born Citizen is a term of art directly from the Original Common Law, law of nations, which defines nbC as "one born in a country of parents who are its citizens." (See Law of Nations, Vattel, Bk 1 Ch 212).

SCOTUS has defined nbC the same as ;aw of nations multiple times (See Minor v. Happersett, 88 US 162, 167 (1874, referring to "the common law, which the framers were familiar" (law of nations), and also The Venus, also Wong Kim Ark, to name a few. SCOTUS has NEVER defined it any other way, and has NEVER said that anyone born in a foreign country could be a natural born Citizen.

The purpose of the requirement of nbC is to prevent foreign influence (Fact-- see Federalist 68), therefore it is impossible that one born in a foreign country or to a foreign parent is eligible. The purpose of a statute gives one of the best insights into its meaning (well held statutory construction).

Simon said...

^ Ohmigosh. The stupid—it burns. I'm done with you.

At any rate, gang: Mick may be an idiot, but as I mentioned above, think "broken watch." Don't be as hasty to dismiss the Cruz eligibility question as you should be to dismiss Mick.

averagejoe said...

madisonfella said...
He might as well call himself the "Progressive Republican".

America could use another Teddy Roosevelt

3/1/15, 7:40 AM

Right, cause his presence in the 1912 election helped a racist progressive democrat party member win the presidency.

Mick said...

Simon said...
^ Ohmigosh. The stupid—it burns. I'm done with you.

At any rate, gang: Mick may be an idiot, but as I mentioned above, think "broken watch." Don't be as hasty to dismiss the Cruz eligibility question as you should be to dismiss Mick.?

Typically void of facts and long on insult. "Subject" and "Citizen" are 2 different words. The exact term of art is found in law of nations, no mental gymnastics are needed to make "subject" into "citizen".

So you say that Sosa v. Alvarez and Kiobel did not refer to law of nations as "original Common Law"?

Revenant said...

If I had to guess, I would say that the nominees for this year will be Walker for President and Paul for VP.

Achilles said...

Revenant said...
"If I had to guess, I would say that the nominees for this year will be Walker for President and Paul for VP."

Would Condoleeza Rice say yes to VP if asked?

It would take the whole vagina issue down a peg but more importantly that would force people to compare tenures as SOS. No review of Hillary's time at state would review well...

Revenant said...

Would Condoleeza Rice say yes to VP if asked?

I have no idea, but she'd be a terrible choice.

mariner said...

America could use another Teddy Roosevelt.

For what?

How about a pincushion?