ACTION

I just received an email from the Tea Party Command Center entitled  "2016 Poll:  Who is your choice for the Presidential Nomination" and the choices include: Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal, Rand Paul, Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum, Allan West, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Rick Perry, Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan.  The truth of the matter is that any one of those people could do a better job than the person now occupying the White House, though I must admit,  Jeb Bush’s name on the ballot would have me quite upset.

There is a more important issue in play than the ability or conservative credentials of the names presented for your and my consideration. Our Republic is in dire straits now because we and our elected officials have not been faithful to our Constitution.  There are many reasons why that happened but it has become obvious to us all, I think, that the only way to regain our freedom is to return to a strict adherence to the Constitution of the United States of America. If we are to do that we must face reality and stop dancing around certain issues even though they are difficult to deal with or because they affect our favorite conservative whom we would like to see as President of the United States.

The qualifications for President include that the candidate must be a Natural Born Citizen.  That means that the person must be born in the US, a US possession or military base and have two parents who are citizens of the USA at the time of his or her birth. Our current President is not a Natural Born Citizen according to the birth certificate that he presented and is now on display on the White House website . Had we been faithful to our Constitution we would not now have a President who seems hell bent on destroying our country.

So the question is; will we obey the Law of the Land always or only when it suits us? Will we decide that it is okay for the President to be other than a natural Born Citizen if we like the person and he or she is from the party to which we belong?  Are we going to just pretend that the question doesn’t really matter or we didn’t notice?  The answer to these questions is important because three of the names offered, the ones in red above, are not Natural Born Citizens by the currently accepted definition established by the Supreme Court. This is the case according to everything I can find and sadly two of them would be among my first choices for the job.

This leaves us with three choices; refuse to vote for these people and hope that they do not end up on the ballot; work to change the Constitution through the amendment process; continue to stay quiet and pretend it doesn’t matter, support and vote for the person we like best regardless of that problem and join with those who only pay attention to the Constitution when it suits their purposes.

So far nobody is discussing this including those whose names appear as potential candidates. Personally I wish we would talk about this out loud and come up with a principled plan of attack. If we do not, three names would have to be crossed of my list of possible candidates. If someone finds that I have made an error determining the eligibility of those three individuals in red above, please let me know so I can quit agonizing about this issue. If I am correct, why do so may people keep putting those names forward in spite of this problem?