After his third-place finish in New Hampshire, GOP presidential contender Ted Cruz is trying to reinvent himself as a civil libertarian in a bid for Sen. Rand Paul’s supporters. Paul’s supporters should be very wary. If Cruz’s extreme anti-gay and anti-immigration tirades don’t give them pause already, the Expatriate Terrorist Act, Cruz’s unconstitutional brainchild, which Sen. Paul refuses to support, certainly should.

Cruz first introduced this monstrosity in the Senate in 2014, only to have it shot down. But since the San Bernardino attacks, he has renewed his efforts to push it through the Senate Judiciary Committee, on which he sits, and bring it for a floor vote. Meanwhile, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) has introduced a companion bill in the House. And given that Republicans now control both chambers, absent a filibuster, this awful legislation could well pass Congress and reach the president’s desk.

Shikha Dalma explains how awful this proposal is @ Reason http://reason.com/archives/2016/02/23/ted-cruzs-assault-on-the-citizenship-rig

January 12, 2016, Santa Fe, NM – Former New Mexico Governor and presidential candidate Gary Johnson released the following statement following President Obama’s State of the Union Address:

“I applaud the President’s optimism. I too am an optimist. But I have a real problem with basing that optimism on what government has done over the past 7 years and what President Obama wants it to do in the future.

He says that anyone who says the economy is in decline is peddling fiction. We can quibble over economists’ numbers, but it doesn’t take an economist to know that continuing to add to the national debt is bankrupting us – and that debt has doubled on his watch, aided and abetted by Congress.

He talks about medical advances, after having done everything in his power to kill medical innovation with new taxes and layers of bureaucracy. His signature promise of better care and lower cost simply isn’t happening.

He speaks of civil rights and those who have resisted expanding them. This from a President whose Administration continues at every turn to dismantle the 4th Amendment, spy on American citizens and plant the government in every aspect of society.

To be fair, there have been steps in the right direction. Meaningful criminal justice reform is taking hold across the nation. More and more governments at all levels are finally seeing the failure of the War on Drugs. But far too many Americans are still being victimized by militarized police and heavy-handed laws.

My assessment of the State of the Union is quite different than President Obama’s, and much simpler. I see a national debt that will hit $20 trillion by the time he leaves office. I see a government that was too big and too overreaching when he took office, and has gotten more so under his watch. And I challenge anyone to show that we are today safer after years of war, failed nation-building abroad and foreign policy chaos.

I’m optimistic, but not because of anything the government is going to do for us. I’m optimistic because it is clear America is tired of too much government and too little freedom, and appears poised to demand change – a different kind of change than we have gotten over the past 7 years.”

Gary Johnson served as Governor of New Mexico from 1995 to 2003, and ran for President in 2012 as the candidate of The Libertarian Party. Gov. Johnson is a candidate for the nomination of The Libertarian Party for President in 2016. More information on the Gary Johnson campaign can be found @ https://www.garyjohnson2016.com/

Some perceptive observers have looked at Donald Trump’s history, and questioned his commitment to the Republican Party. He has been a Democrat and an Independent; he is friendly with the Clintons, and he once considered a third party run for President.

Odd bird that he is, The Donald has perched in the Grand Old Party. and he is gathering a big nest of committed followers, with his call for mass deportation and registering Muslim Americans.

Donald Trump’s call for mass deportation of illegal immigrants and their families envisions a massive government program – he is not satisfied with Mitt Romney’s reliance on the initiative of individuals to self-deport.

The harshness of his rhetoric has drawn condemnation, but building a campaign on fear of immigrants and hostility toward Mexicans is not a new idea for Republicans. Pete Wilson was re-elected Governor of California in 1994 with TV ads that showed Mexicans crossing the border, with a voice-over that said “They just keep coming.”

Nobody talks about Pete Wilson anymore. Few people talk about the California Republican Party, no longer competitive in America’s largest state.

Donald Trump has floated the idea of registering Muslims in a government database. To be fair, he has not committed to the idea. This idea is not new either, but the antecedents are in Europe, not America. Pick your abstraction – government registration of non-Christians, or government registration of Semites – Arabs are, as are Jews. The idea is repulsive, an inheritance from its ugly forebears.

Recently Mr Trump has proposed a temporary ban on Muslims immigrating to America. The idea of a religious test for immigrants has been condemned by Speaker Paul Ryan, Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu, and others. Obviously unenforceable, it would seem to go against the Constitution’s ban on religious tests.

Such an idea has never been implemented as government policy, but in the 1890s Republican orators raged against “Rum, Romanism and Rebellion” as they sought votes from native born Protestants. When Republicans denounced “Papism” it was not aimed at all Catholics, but at the hordes of Irish who came to the country in the post Civil War period. Other Catholics were welcomed into the Republican Party, including Italian Americans in New York City and wealthy Catholics along the eastern seaboard.

With his recent willingness to entertain the idea of internment camps for Muslims, Donald Trump invokes the legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt. At the beginning of World War II, President Roosevelt ordered the internment of Japanese residents – many prohibitied from citizenship by the 1923 immigration law and earlier “oriental exclusion” acts – because of fears that they owed loyalty to the Emperor of Japan. This act by a Democrat President was supported by California’s Republican Governor, Earl Warren, but has since been repudiated by a bipartisan majority in Congress, which voted reparations to decendents of the Nisei.

Donald Trump’s proposals to create a totalitarian state to deal with the threat of terrorism, or of people crossing the border to seek paid work, have driven up his poll numbers. Currently, as of mid-December, Trump is polling at 35% of Republican voters. Conservative voters who truly believe in limited government, and Republicans who remember that Ronald Reagan welcomed immigrants and favored peace and trade with the Middle East will need to look to other alternatives in November of 2016.