Ted Cruz, future candidate for US prez ...

will renounce his birthright to "soshalist" benefits and advantages that his family members fully exploited when they lived in Canada, where little Ted was born.

Senator Cruz is leading a crusade to repeal Obamacare because it smacks of socialism even though it expands health-care insurance coverage to millions of Americans.

The petition on his website reads: “I do NOT support socializing health care in America. I understand that, in every other nation that has socialized health care, the result has predictably been poorer quality health care, a crushing tax burden, scarcity and rationing, and complete government control of individual medical decisions.”

You’d think that a Canadian citizen who was born in a Canadian “socialist” hospital would know better.

By late 1970 when Ted was born, Alberta had finally joined the national medicare plan. The Cruzes would have received all medical care, including delivery of baby Ted, for next to nothing. Even before 1970, the Alberta government had provided free maternity care under a version of health-care insurance known at the time as Manning Care.

And despite what Cruz says about complete government control of individual health decisions, I am sure his mother got to choose the obstetrician and pediatrician she wanted and that no one would have interfered with the decisions taken by her and those doctors.

But then again if you were born in Canada but you want to be president of the United States it’s important to shuck that left-wing taint.

And you certainly wouldn’t want anyone to know that you actually benefitted from all that socialism.

So, renouncing one's Canadian citizenship is easy-peasy, not so much US citizenship which is time-consuming and requires a lot of form-filling as well as forking money over to Uncle Sam.   

Less facile for Cruz is that inconvenient bit about NOT being physically born in the US, which is constitutionally required of all presidents.

Among critics of Barack Obama, there is a whole lunatic contingent known as "birthers" because they claim that the current POTUS isn't a legal natural-born citizen, that his birth certificate is fraudulent.

Confused yet?

This should be helpful, for understanding the issues.

Many hope that the place of birth question will disqualify Cruz, as some think that he's a more dangerous Joe McCarthy.