TED CRUZ'S FATHER FOUGHT WITH FIDEL. WAIT, WHAT?

I agree that wingnut demigod Ted Cruz is being hypocritical in this defense of his hard-line immigration stance, but the thing that really sticks out for me is the fact that his father fought with Fidel Castro. Um, isn't being the fruit of a lefty revolutionary's loins supposed to put a politician under a permanent cloud of suspicion, according to wingnuts? Or is that true only if the pol is named Obama?

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) says that comprehensive immigration reform is "incredibly unfair to those who follow the rules," even though his father admits that he was forced to use bribes to immigrate from Cuba.

In an interview aired by NPR on Thursday, Cruz held up his father, 74-year-old Rafael Bienvenido Cruz, as an example of why it was wrong to offer a path to citizenship to the millions of undocumented immigrants living in the United States illegally.

"I came to this country legally," Rafael Cruz told NPR.....

The older Cruz explained that he had once fought with Fidel Castro's forces in Cuba to overthrow Fulgencio Batista, a U.S.-backed dictator. He later fled to the United States after receiving a four-year student visa to study at the University of Texas.

"Then the only other thing that I needed was an exit permit from the Batista government," Rafael Cruz said. "A friend of the family, a lawyer friend of my father, basically bribed a Batista official to stamp my passport with an exit permit." ...

Over at National Review, Ranesh Ponnuru thinks this is no big deal:

Senator Ted Cruz (R., Tex.), who's an old friend of mine, has been arguing that a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants "is incredibly unfair to those who follow the rules." A left-wing website is suggesting that this view is somehow in conflict with the fact that Cruz’s father "basically bribed his way in" to the U.S. Actually, the elder Cruz bribed his way out of Batista's Cuba. I'm pretty sure that when Senator Cruz talks about the importance of the rule of law, he isn't referring to the laws of a Cuban regime that no longer exists.

Yes, but the regime that no longer exists is one that National Review vastly preferred to the Castro regime that succeeded it -- and not just National Review, but the entirety of the right, both then and now.

So Rafael Cruz fought with Castro and bribed the anti-communist government that opposed Castro. Anything else?

After his student visa expired, Rafael Cruz obtained political asylum in the U.S. He then found work with the oil industry in Canada, where Ted Cruz was born.

Rafael Cruz became a Canadian citizen while in Canada. While his son was serving as solicitor general of Texas in 2005, Rafael Cruz renounced his Canadian citizenship and became and American citizen.

So Ted Cruz wasn't born here and his father -- who, unlike Obama's father, was an actual presence in his son's life -- fought with a commie, bribed his way to America, and has pledged loyalty to three countries in his lifetime. I know Canada ain't Kenya or Indonesia, but can you imagine if this were Obama's origin story?