Both of these individuals are of Indian descent. Both had parents who were immigrants from India. In fact, Nikki Haley’s birth name is “Nimarata Nikki Randhawa”.
The United States Constitution has a clause that limits the presidency to “natural born citizens”. In order to interpret what this means, we have to discern what the founders would have understood the term to mean.
It does not merely mean a person who is born as a United States citizen. It means that the person’s father also must have been a United States citizen. The rationale was national security because you don’t want a person to be president who has divided loyalties.
The term “natural born citizen” is not the same as the term “naturalized citizen”. These terms have two different meanings.
Obama was not a natural born citizen and yet was permitted to assume the presidency. That had devastating effects.
It is doubtful that Haley or Ramaswamy will win the GOP presidential nomination– and they should not. But it is very possible they could be tapped as a vice-presidential nominee. That would also be highly inappropriate because a vice-president must necessarily be qualified to become president. And neither of these two individuals are qualified to become president.
TC: Totally agree, especially about Haley.
Haley is a fairly contemptible woman, Fred– a horrible candidate. She was awful and pandering to the elites when she pulled the Confederate flag from the SC state capitol in response to the Charleston mass shooting. But she has pockets of support within the establishment GOP and especially among female Republicans.
From Stephen Moore:
Nikki Haley Does Her Version of the Bataan Political Death March on Social Security
” We’re surprised that so many of our friends are praising Nikki Haley – the former governor of South Carolina and UN Ambassador – for her “political courage” during the GOP presidential debate last week in Miami when she endorsed cutting Social Security benefits and raising the retirement age.
Courage? How about political stupidity for walking right out front of a Democratic firing gallery?
The DNC is on cloud nine. They can’t believe their good fortune. Their ad consultants are already preparing a blizzard of campaign ads against those scheming Republicans for cutting Social Security to seniors. (Remember the ads about Paul Ryan pushing granny in the wheel chair off the cliff? Here we go again!)
Do you think abortion is a tough issue for Republicans? Wait until you see the carnage from GOP suggestions about Social Security cutbacks.
Will Republicans NEVER learn? Every time they talk about cutting Social Security – dating back to the early Reagan years when OMB director David Stockman said he would balance the budget by cutting Social Security COLA increases – they get politically shellacked. Over and over and over. But for some reason, the Republicans are like moths attracted to this flame.
The AVERAGE Social Security benefit today is a measly $1,705.80 a month. That’s after paying 40 years of a 12% payroll tax imposed on every paycheck they earned. The GOP should be talking about how to make Social Security a BETTER deal for seniors, not a worse one.
If Congress hadn’t stolen payroll tax money (and spent it on other programs) but merely deposited the funds in a passbook low-interest savings account – retirees would be getting two to three times MORE than Social Security is promising to pay. If the money had been put into a 401k plan the monthly benefits would be five to 10 times higher. ”
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There is no doubt that Social Security is a stupid program. The real question is how to get out of it. The government locks people in by taking a big chunk of their paycheck for decades, after which no one wants to hear about any reduction in benefits, even though the anticipated payout bears no relation to what the person paid in. No one with any sense relies mainly on Social Security for retirement: the Democrats who pen demagogic attacks on Republicans are all sitting on fat 401(k) accounts or government pensions.
All of that said, the immediate issue is political. It is political malpractice for a Republican to volunteer, unbidden, a suggestion that Social Security benefits should be reduced. This is one of several instances in which Nikki Haley has shown political tone-deafness, sometimes toward the conservative base and sometimes, as in this case, toward the general public.
Fred, as I watched the last debate, it struck me that her facial expression consisted of her gritting her teeth, appearing angry– and this was incessant. Social Security is a dilemma. The system has to implode before it can be fixed in a positive way. That is the price of enacting unconstitutional programs.