Media misses the point with Ted Cruz

Ted Cruz, the junior senator from Texas, is the first Republican to officially announce his candidacy for president in 2016. His early endorsements include every registered Democrat in the United States. His early detractors should include every Republican who hopes their party can make a credible case for the White House.

And yet, the media (especially the lefties like CNN and MSNBC) seem to care more about two of the least important things about Cruz: where he was born, and where his healthcare comes from. Both should be debunked in favor of much larger concerns.

Ted Cruz is a U.S. citizen but was born in Canada, which some say poses a challenge in the face of the Constitution’s requirement that only a “natural born citizen” can run for president. Cruz renounced Canadian citizenship in May 2014 and has technically been a U.S. citizen since birth because of his American mother. Because of this, in the Harvard Law Review, Paul Clement, the solicitor general during George W. Bush’s second term as president, and Neal Katyal, who was an acting solicitor general for President Barack Obama, both argued there is “no question” that Cruz fulfills the natural born citizen requirement. Talking about Cruz’s natural born citizenship like it’s legitimately in question rips the rug out from under anyone who still wants to make fun of Donald Trump and the birthers for thinking Obama was born in Kenya.

The next straw man the media latched on to was Cruz’s announcement on CNN that he would sign up for health care through Obamacare’s exchange based in Washington, D.C. The press wasted no time lampooning him for signing up for the very service that he pledged “to repeal every word of,” but in reality, Cruz is only signing up for health insurance because he is no longer covered by his wife’s plan (she is taking a leave of absence from her job at Goldman Sachs in light of his run for the presidency). Cruz needs insurance, and he and his wife could either purchase a wildly expensive private plan, or they, like many Americans, could get it through Cruz’s status as a U.S. senator. In the former case, members of Congress must sign up through the law’s D.C. exchange. Cruz isn’t doing anything hypocritical — he’s just following the law.

Instead of chortling away with headlines like “Ted-I-Am Really Likes Obamacare,” CNN should devote its time to explaining the ramifications of Cruz’s call to repeal Obamacare. Doing so would kick millions of kids off their parents’ insurance, allow insurance companies to deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions and permit insurers to stop paying for treatment of expensive illnesses like cancer once patients reach their coverage limit. Sounds a little more serious than being born in Canada, don’t you think?

Republicans, from the top donors, to the party leadership, to the voters, should avoid Cruz at all costs for two reasons. First, he will drag the entire party to the right in primary season and damage beyond repair whatever candidate ends up in the general election. He is radically socially conservative, and it doesn’t take much imagining to see him standing up at the first Republican primary debate, announcing his support for a Constitutional amendment to allow the states to make gay marriage illegal if they so choose and demanding the likes of Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio to raise their hands if they support it. If they don’t, they’ll lose the primary -— if they do, they’ll have no chance at winning the presidency.

Cruz is also a fierce denier of the belief that human-caused global warming represents a threat to the planet. He has compared believers of human-caused climate warming (which includes 97 percent of the scientific community) to “flat-earthers” and argued that the cold weather when he visited New Hampshire casts doubt on their beliefs. Again, a belief perhaps more dangerous than where Cruz gets his healthcare from.

When Cruz’s views aren’t threatening the planet’s survival, they are likely diminishing his chances to beat prospective Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. This should, of course, seem obvious, but when the media on the left treats Cruz like a clown rather than someone who takes himself seriously and is revered by a substantial number of evangelical conservatives, they do themselves an enormous disservice.

Here’s why: Cruz’s chances of winning the presidency are about as likely as Vin Diesel’s Furious 7 winning the Oscar for Best Picture. Averaging the three national primary polls taken in March puts Cruz in eighth place with 4.6 percent of the vote. But, similar to Missouri senatorial candidate Todd Akin, who discussed his views of “legitimate rape” and had no chance of winning but single-handedly managed to tank the rest of the party’s chances in the 2012 midterms, Cruz could also sabotage the entire Republican field via guilt by association. Moreover, if his funding doesn’t run out, he can keep showing up in debates and on primary ballots. Harry Enten at FiveThirtyEight described the Cruz campaign as a “juicy rib-eye that robbers use to distract a guard dog during a heist.” Cruz’s candidacy has handed the media a gift on a silver platter, but they’re totally missing their chance to devour it.

Nathaniel Haas is a junior majoring in political science and economics. His column, “State of the Union,” runs  Fridays.