Believe it or not, the right wing is targeting Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a rumored vice presidential contender. They argue he is ineligible for the job because his Cuban parents weren't U.S. citizens when he was born in Miami in 1971.
It is the same argument of twisted logic and handpicked history the so-called birther fringe has been throwing at Barack Obama since his presidential candidacy began.
Here's how blogger "Obama Release Your Records" sees it in a post he wrote three weeks ago:
Marco Rubio is not now and never can be a Natural Born Citizen because his parents were not citizens at the time he was born ... The main stream media and news organizations all across the country are brazen in their attempts to subvert the Constitution. They are now completely complicit and actively engaged in undermining the rule of law by aiding and abetting a usurper to the Office of the Presidency...which is a crime.The problem is that few serious legal scholars believe that anyone born on U.S. soil could fail to meet the "natural born citizen" requirement in the Constitution.
The Fort Myers News-Press rang up some professors this week to bounce the Rubio problem off them.
"There's no serious question because he was born in the USA. Any contrary argument is birther-like silliness," Daniel Takaji, a law professor at Ohio State University, tells the paper. "His parents' immigration status is irrelevant to his U.S. citizenship under the 14th [Amendment]."
Rubio certainly has a better argument to be president than Barry Goldwater, the 1964 Republican candidate who wasn't even born on U.S. soil. Goldwater was born in Arizona before it became an American state.
A few scholars do want to see the Supreme Court hear arguments over someone like Rubio's candidacy, just to stop these kinds of arguments from erupting from the birth-iest corners of the Interwebs.
Rubio, to his credit, never gave the birthers much credence when Obama was in their crosshairs. When Donald Trump was stirring the birther masses, Rubio told the L.A. Times that he was "more concerned with issues that are happening back here on planet Earth." Either way, the hubbub might be a nonissue for now. His spokesman tells the News-Press that birthers or not, Rubio is not interested in leaving the Senate. "He's not going to be vice president," spokesman Alex Burgos says.
What does all this prove? The "birther" movement can just as easily direct its racism at Republicans as at Dems.
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