I’m feeling oddly out of sorts these days.
Why? Well, I’m feeling a bit of sympathy for a patently unsympathetic politician: U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.
Readers of this blog know that I do not intend to vote for Sen. Cruz for president of the United States. But two things have happened in recent weeks that make me want to stand with him.
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/ted-cruz-feud-new-york-times-119981.html?hp=t4_r
He’s now feuding with the New York Times over the paper’s refusal to include his new memoir, “A Time for Truth,” on its list of best-selling books. It’s selling like crazy, being scarfed up from book shelves by supporters who want to read the junior senator’s words of wisdom and how he intends to rescue the United States of America.
Cruz and his allies say the NYT snub is pure partisanship. The liberal publication won’t give this conservative pol the time of day, let alone list his memoir on its vaunted best-seller list.
Cruz’s feud is going win him more friends on the right. I won’t join his campaign, but it does seem a bit churlish on the Times’s part to exclude him from the best-seller list.
The second aspect involves The Donald, who’s bringing up the “birther” controversy all over again. Sen. Cruz is the target this time. Donald Trump said that because Cruz was born in Canada, he’s not qualified to serve as president. “Natural-born citizen,” in Trump’s mind, means he a candidate must be born in the U.S.; that’s how he interprets the Constitution.
Trump is wrong.
Cruz’s mother is an American citizen. That grants him U.S. citizenship by birth. Cruz could have been born on Mars — which is where I sometimes think is Trump’s place of birth — and he still would be qualified to run for and serve as president in the highly unlikely event he is elected next year.
Trump tried to pull the birther stunt on Barack Obama, even though the president actually was born in Hawaii. He’s at it once again with Cruz.
Hey, I’m just trying to be fair here. I might dislike Cruz’s philosophy and don’t want him elected president of the United States. However, I know mistreatment when I see it. Cruz is getting a bum deal from the New York Times.
As for the birther crap that comes from Donald Trump’s pie hole, well … enough said on that.