WaPo: Did Republicans just give away the 2016 election by raising birthright citizenship?
Is that an overstatement? Maybe. But hear me out.
For months, people like me have been pointing to the fundamental challenge Republican presidential candidates face on immigration: they need to talk tough to appeal to their base in the primaries, but doing so risks alienating the Hispanic voters they’ll need in the general election. This was always going to be a difficult line to walk, but a bunch of their candidates just leaped off to one side.
After Donald Trump released his immigration plan, which includes an end to birthright citizenship — stating that if you were born in the United States but your parents were undocumented, you don’t get to be a citizen — some of his competitors jumped up to say that they agreed. NBC News asked Scott Walker the question directly, and he seemed to reply that he does favor an end to birthright citizenship, though his campaign qualified the statement later. Bobby Jindal tweeted, “We need to end birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants.” Then reporters began looking over others’ past statements to see where they stood on this issue, and found that this isn’t an uncommon position among the GOP field. Remember all the agonizing Republicans did about how they had to reach out to Hispanic voters? They never figured out how to do it, and now they’re running in the opposite direction.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/08/18/did-republicans-just-give-away-the-2016-election-by-raising-birthright-citizenship/?hpid=z2
= new reply since forum marked as read
For the purposes of determining presidential eligibility, a "natural born" citizen is understood to be someone who gains citizenship "by birth" or "at birth," as opposed to being naturalized as a U.S. citizen, according to a 2011 report from the Congressional Research Service. Birthers contest that understanding, challenging both candidates who were born outside of the U.S. to at least one American parent and candidates who were born inside of the U.S. to foreign parents.
The birther movement most vociferously opposed President Barack Obama's candidacy. But over the years birthers also have challenged George Romney, who was born in Mexico; Barry Goldwater, who was born in Arizona before it became a state; John McCain, who was born in Panama; and even Mitt Romney, who was born in Michigan but whose aforementioned father was born in Mexico.
Now, there are four Republicans running for President in 2016 who've captured the birthers' attention: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) and former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA). Jack Cashill, an author and columnist for WND, the conspiracy theory website that has been something of a birther movement hub, told TPM last week that these birthers remain "constitutionally opposed" to those candidates' eligibility even though they're still likely "ideologically aligned" with the candidates.
Here's how the far-right fringe challenges the candidacies of the four GOPers.
(There follows an explanation of the birthers' case against Cruz - born in Canada with a Cuban father, Rubio - Cuban parents, he's an 'anchor baby', Jindal - foreign parents, he's an 'anchor baby' too, and even Santorum - father may have still be an Italian citizen when he was born.)
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/birther-cases-against-gopers-explained
I had not heard of the birthers' issue with Santorum before.
Once again, if you support crazies and their CT's don't be surprised when they come back around to bite you. 
