When U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a freshman from Texas, released his Canadian birth certificate over the weekend, it became clear the great Cuban-American hope of the tea party for 2016 is a Canadian citizen.

And, of course, he is also an American citizen, because he was born to an American citizen in Canada.

Quite without realizing it, apparently, the location of Cruz’s birth automatically made him a citizen of our socialist (in healthcare, at least) neighbor to the north. Did his mother receive excellent free medical care under Canada’s single-payer healthcare system when her baby was born in Calgary, Alberta, in 1970? Did little Ted, who moved back to the United States with his Cuban-born father and American-born mother when he was 4, get free vaccinations and pediatric care from his Canadian doctors?

We’ll probably never know.

Cruz won’t want the answers anyway. A leader in the fight against President Obama’s healthcare law, it’s not in his political interest to find anything positive about government-sponsored healthcare. Cruz, after all, is leaning hard on his GOP brethren in the Senate to threaten a shutdown of the American government if Congress does not defund the healthcare law. (To paraphrase Sarah Palin: “How’d that shut-down thing work for ya last time?”)


Obamacare is not going away.

Too many Americans appreciate being able to keep their children on their healthcare policies until the kids turn 26. Too many Americans appreciate not being refused coverage because of some pre-existing condition. Too many Americans appreciate the concept that there should not be a lifetime cap on medical expenses. Or that preventive and prenatal care exam costs should be covered by insurance companies because they save so much money down the line.

In the meantime, after denying he was a Canadian citizen, Cruz has said he will renounce his Canadian citizenship.

Conservative websites are trotting out their favorite insult cliches about the entirely legitimate coverage of this non-bombshell but very entertaining news about Cruz.


“Cruz Derangement Syndrome” yelped Breitbart.com, proving we desperately need some fresh cliches.

“Fearful of Cruz as a prospective Republican presidential nominee in 2016,” the site said, “the media is now digging into his past, all the way back to birth.”

Oh, the nerve.

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Twitter: @robinabcarian

robin.abcarian@latimes.com