An open letter to my American friends:
As a proud Canadian and good friend of the United States, I feel it is my duty to bring to your attention a salient fact about the recently declared candidate for the Republican nomination for president: Ted Cruz was born in Canada.
That's right; Senator Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta back in 1970 and I've got the photocopy of his birth certificate to prove it. Furthermore, Mr. Cruz lived in Calgary for four years which it just so happens is the length of one presidential term.
I know how you folks take presidential qualifications very seriously. After all, a number of you are still convinced that Barack Obama couldn't produce a legitimate birth certificate from Hawaii and may well have been born in Kenya.
Given that the evidence in this case is clearer, I'm sure you'll want to take immediate action to disqualify Mr. Cruz from the 2016 race. It's one thing to have a sitting president with a questionable birth history. It's quite another to let someone throw his hat into the ring when that hat is more likely a Stetson or a hockey helmet or maybe even a tuque.
Since your Constitution clearly states that someone has to be "a natural born citizen" to be president, there's little doubt that Senator Cruz doesn't fit the bill. Some experts say that because his mother was a U.S. citizen that he meets the test but the Supreme Court has never ruled on the matter and I can't imagine that a majority of sitting justices would ever find anything "natural" about being born in Canada.
Some say that a narrow interpretation of the constitutional requirement is unfair and serves no practical purpose in today's world. I disagree. I think your founding fathers were very wise and I suspect that they were concerned about the possible deleterious effects a foreign born president could visit upon the nation.
You're probably thinking, what's so bad about being born in Canada? Nothing, of course, except for the fact that Mr. Cruz was likely born in a hospital operating under a socialized medicine scheme.
Senator Cruz rails against such a system and vows to destroy Obamacare if elected. Can you really take him seriously when he says that? After all, he owes his very existence to socialized medicine.
And it's not like he was born in Calgary and then immediately shipped across the border into the United States. No, he spent four years in Canada, perhaps the most important four years of a person's life.
Mr. Cruz may vigorously deny that his Canadian sojourn had any effect on his personality. But how much do we really remember from that time in our life? Yet it is a period in which our mental and social development is crucial.
Many questions remain to be asked. Did Mr. Cruz spend time in state-sponsored daycare? Was he ever in attendance at a nursery school where he had to swear an oath of allegiance to the Queen? Was he exposed to people speaking French or using strange pronunciations of such words as "schedule" or "about" or the letter "z"? Did he at any time own a pair of skates or a tiny hockey stick?
To those of you on the right, Mr. Cruz' political positions may sound appealing. But can you rely on them being authentic? Does Mr. Cruz himself even know what effect his Canadian upbringing may have had on his psyche?
I'm not saying he is not sincere in his essentially anti-Canadian positions on everything from healthcare to immigration reform. But instead of being a true Tea Party candidate, he may instead turn out to be the Manchurian Candidate or, even worse, the Canadian Candidate.
Once in office, there's no telling what this guy might do. Instead of the rightwing America you were expecting to get, you might end up with a parliamentary democracy filled with more maple syrup, hockey and socialized medicine than you ever dreamed of.
My American friends; it's just not worth taking the chance. Tell Mr. Cruz, thanks but no thanks, eh?
This post is political satire.