The Senate will be staying out of Donald Trump's fight over whether or not Ted Cruz is constitutionally eligible to be president, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on ABC's This Week Sunday.
"I don't think the Senate ought to get in the middle of it," McConnell told host George Stephanopoulous.
Cruz, who was born to a Cuban father and an American mother in Canada, has faced recent questions about his legal ability to run for President. The most vocal critic of the freshman senator's eligibility comes from rival Donald Trump, who called the issue "a very precarious one for Republicans." Since then Cruz has seen numerous politicians support his eligibility, including fellow presidential candidate Jeb Bush and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. […]
"I just don't think the Senate ought to get into the middle of this," he said. "These guys are all slugging it out in Iowa and New Hampshire. We'll have a nominee hopefully by sometime in the spring."
Why should the question of whether the Senate is going to do anything with this even come up? Because back in 2008, this happened.
The Senate has unanimously declared John McCain a natural-born citizen, eligible to be president of the United States.
McCain, you might remember, was born in a military hospital in the Panama Canal Zone which was under jurisdiction of the U.S. back then and that was briefly an issue in his campaign for president. Back then, the Senate was, well, unanimous in backing him up and helping him dispense with the issue.
But that was John McCain, who might be a little on the cranky side, but is still generally popular with his colleagues. This is Ted Cruz, the most hated person in the Senate. Nobody's going to be doing anything to make his political life easier.