Michael O'Brien
is reporting that Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) warned Sen. Claire
McCaskill (D-Mo.) of "disloyalty" to President Obama if she should seek
to distance herself from the White House in her re-election campaign.
Cleaver, who's seen as the likely next leader of the
Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), cautioned the centrist senator of
distancing herself from Obama, the way many endangered incumbents had
done in the closing weeks of the 2012 election.
"Any attempt to
extricate herself from him will be an act of disloyalty," Cleaver told
McClatchy in a piece profiling McCaskill's re-election campaign. "She
will not do that at all."
McCaskill is one of the centrist
Democrats who managed victory in the 2006 election thanks to the
headwinds favoring her party in that cycle.
Since winning,
though, there have been signs that the Show-Me State has trended
Republican. Rep. Roy Blunt (R) easily secured victory in the state's
Senate race this fall, for instance. And McCaskill might feel justified
in running from Obama in 2012, since it was one of the few swing states
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) managed to hold onto the 2008 presidential
election, while Obama was sweeping to victory elsewhere.
McCaskill has sided with the president and majority Democrats on a
series of key votes. She voted for healthcare reform, Wall Street reform
and the stimulus bill.
Cleaver needn't worry. McCaskill was
one of the very first to support Obama. Way back in 2004, McCaskill was trying everything she could to prepare the way for the
ineligible Barack Obama, clearly demonstratng that the Democratic
Party has known all along that Obama was ineligible to serve as
POTUS.
On February 28, 2008, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO)
introduced a bill to the Senate for consideration. That bill
was known as S. 2678: Children of Military Families Natural Born Citizen
Act. The bill was co-sponsored by Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), Sen.
Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), and Sen. Thomas
Coburn (R-OK).
Bill S. 2678 attempted to change
article II, section 1, clause 5 of the Constitution of the United States
with reference to the requirements of being a "natural born citizen" and
hence; the entitlement to run for President of the United States.
This bill met the same fate that similar attempts to change the
Constitution have in the past. Attempts such as
The Natural Born Citizen Act
were known to have failed and the text scrubbed from the internet, with
only a
shadow-cached copy left, that
only the most curious public can find.
Sen. McCaskill, her co-sponsors, fellow colleagues and
legal counsel, contend that the Constitution is ambiguous in article II,
section 1 and requires clarification. But does it? According
to the framers and such drafters as John Bingham, we find the definition
to be quite clear:
I find no fault with the
introductory clause [S 61 Bill], which is simply
declaratory of what is written in the Constitution,
that every human being born within the jurisdiction
of the United States of parents not owing
allegiance to any foreign sovereignty is, in the
language of your Constitution itself, a natural
born citizen…
– John Bingham in the United States House
on March 9, 1866
From the days of
James Madison to the present,
the courts have held that the amendment process be justifiable in
accordance with its constitutionality and not self-serving or political.
But is that what happened here? Again, we must go to the record.
WWithin only five short weeks after
Senate Bill 2678 faded from the floor, we find Sen. Claire McCaskill
back again, making another attempt with
Senate Resolution 511. On
April 10, 2008, she introduced a secondary proposal in the form of a
non-binding resolution, recognizing John McCain as a "natural born
citizen" in defiance of the Constitution. Curiously, it contained
the same identical co-sponsors, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
ABCNews.com reported:
"With questions -- however serious -- about
whether Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is eligible to run for president
since he was born outside U.S. borders on an American Naval base, Sens.
Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary
Committee, and Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. today introduced a
non-binding resolution expressing the sense of the U.S. Senate that
McCain qualifies as a "natural born Citizen," as specified in the
Constitution and eligible for the highest office in the land.
Co-sponsors include Sens.
Hillary Clinton, D-NY, and Barack Obama,
D-Illinois; Leahy said he anticipates it will pass
unanimously."
One has to wonder -- what dire urgency
could there possibly have been in persisting with trying to legislate a
candidate into being a "natural born citizen?" Certainly providing
a birth certificate and reading the Constitution would be more than
sufficient. Why did these candidates and their wishful nominees go
to such lengths in the Senate when obviously, they had more pressing
matters to attend to? And why were there two Senators
co-sponsoring such an issue, twice,
who were in direct competition with John McCain in the 2008 election?
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