Amid Talk of White House Run, Texas Senator Targets Obama’s Health Plan By ASHLEY PARKER and JONATHAN MARTIN Published: August 20, 2013 DALLAS — Senator Ted Cruz, after two days of bedevilment over his birthplace and eligibility for the presidency, returned to form on Tuesday night with a rally here before the conservative faithful aimed at ginning up support to defund President Obama’s health care overhaul. “You’re here because now is the single best time we have to defund Obamacare,” Mr. Cruz said to raucous applause at a cavernous ballroom at the Hilton Anatole hotel. “This is a fight we can win.” The event was part of Heritage Action for America’s “Defund Obamacare” tour, which began Monday in Fayetteville, Ark., and will make stops in nine cities. But Mr. Cruz is only appearing at the Dallas rally, and he drew a standing ovation from a crowd of roughly a thousand people. The tour is timed to the expiration at the end of September of the continuing resolution that finances the government, and Mr. Cruz said Tuesday night that he would call on House members to approve “every penny of the federal government, everything in its entirety, except Obamacare.” “What has to happen after that is we’ve got to do something that conservatives haven’t done in a long time,” he said. “We’ve got to stand up and win the argument.” Speaking to reporters before the rally, Mr. Cruz, a Republican and the junior senator from Texas, said he did “not want to shut down the government — I want to defund Obamacare.” Jim DeMint, a former senator from South Carolina who is now the president of the Heritage Foundation, speaking to reporters before the event, echoed Mr. Cruz’s basic message. “This could be one of the most destructive laws that has ever been imposed on the American people, and now is probably the last best chance we have to actually stop it,” he said. He praised Mr. Cruz for taking the lead in the fight, even when victory was hardly assured. “All you have to do is mention Ted Cruz’s name in any forum — we did last night in Fayetteville — and the crowd is on their feet cheering, because they don’t necessarily expect him to win, but they do appreciate someone willing to stand up to the status quo in Washington to do what he promised,” Mr. DeMint said. Mr. Cruz was interrupted several times by angry protesters, but he was unfazed, saying that he would be happy to “visit” with them later. He closed his remarks by reappropriating Mr. Obama’s signature campaign refrain of “Yes We Can.” “Can we stop the I.R.S.?” he asked. “Can we mobilize grass-roots America? And can we defund Obamacare?” “Yes, we can!” came the eager reply, before Mr. Cruz concluded, “That, my friends, is change we can believe in.” But even in Dallas, Mr. Cruz could not escape questions stemming from a report in The Dallas Morning News on Monday that because he was born in Calgary, Alberta, he held both Canadian and American citizenship. He was forced before the rally to reiterate to reporters eager to discuss the matter that he had “been an American since birth.” On Monday, Mr. Cruz — the child of an American mother and a Cuban-born father who moved to Texas from Canada when he was 4 — renounced his Canadian citizenship. “Nothing against Canada,” he said. But as a United States senator, he added, “I believe I should be only an American.” It may not be quite the same as printing up signs or fashioning a presidential campaign Web site, but the announcement was widely seen by analysts as another step leading to his entry in the 2016 Republican primary race. It is a novel episode in the annals of presidential politics. Looming over his prospects are questions about his eligibility to run, given his place of birth. Mr. Cruz, 42, maintains that because his mother was born in Delaware, he is a natural-born citizen and has the constitutional right to serve as president, and few legal scholars believe his eligibility could be seriously challenged in court. But the issue has been raised before. Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, was born in the Panama Canal Zone to American parents and faced a few questions about his birthplace when he was his party’s presidential nominee in 2008. But it is because of Mr. Obama that Mr. Cruz is confronting not just a constitutional issue but also a political one. Suspicions about Mr. Obama’s background have long flourished on the fringes of American politics, so much so that the so-called birthers who doubt he was born in Hawaii led the president to release his birth certificate in 2011. Mr. Cruz, wanting to pre-empt any such questions about his own origins, released his own birth certificate — dated Dec. 22, 1970. Mr. Cruz may have had another motivation in releasing his birth certificate and renouncing his foreign ties: Canada is not particularly beloved by American conservatives. National Review, the conservative magazine, memorably ran a cover in 2007 depicting a group of Mounties with the headline “Wimps!” The article inside complained about the country’s “whiny and weak anti-Americanism.” Ashley Parker reported from Dallas, and Jonathan Martin from Washington.
Posted on: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 04:49:09 +0000
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