Romney: "Reagan clone is my man!"

SIMI VALLEY, CA – Presidential candidate Mitt Romney made a surprise appearance today at the gravesite of the late President Ronald Reagan. The former Massachusetts governor finally announced his official running mate in the upcoming 2012 Presidential Election: a clone of President Ronald Reagan named Ronald Reagan II, affectionately known as R2.

Questions immediately arose of the realistic possibility and the legitimacy of a clone holding the second highest office in the United States.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid expressed his concerns on MSNBC following Romney’s announcement:

“I have some serious reservations about the constitutional legality of Mitt Romney’s vice presidential nominee. Our forefathers never envisioned a scenario in which a human clone could hold office in this country, but the Constitution clearly states certain criteria, including being a naturally born citizen. We don’t even know if he’s at least 35 years old, or if he’s been a resident for at least 14 years. I mean, does he even have a birth certificate? Are test tube clone babies birthed at all? If you ask me, a clone test-tube baby is about as unnatural of a birth as a slimy alien bursting out of a chest. Sorry for the grisly description. I just saw Prometheus, and I can’t get those visuals out of my head. Ridley Scott, you’ve done it again! Anyway, I digress. We will definitely be taking this to the Supreme Court.”

Potentially having a clone as Vice President does sound like science fiction, but looking at the facts, there may not be much legal ground for the Democrats on which to stand. In 1970, President Reagan had DNA samples taken when he was still acting as Governor of California with the intention of creating a clone of himself. He and his wife Nancy were concerned about his well-being after members of his family had developed Alzheimer’s Disease, a common form of dementia, so they used their notable wealth attained from his Hollywood acting days to commission multiple projects in an attempt to elongate Reagan’s mental and physical health, including hyperbaric chambers, cryo-chambers, and early research into medication that would later become Viagra®.

A clone was successfully formed in a laboratory in Sweden in 1972, giving birth to R2, making him 40 years old. He was brought to the United States when he was 11 years old after Reagan Sr. was elected President, making R2 a U.S. resident for 31 years.

The last point of contention would be if R2 is a naturally born citizen, and this may be the Democrats’ strongest case against the vice presidential nominee. Although the phrasing of Article Two is vague, precedents have been set to qualify people as “natural-born citizens” if they are born abroad from U.S. citizen-parents. To clone Reagan, DNA was taken from the President and injected into the nucleus of an unfertilized egg from his wife Nancy, both of whom are clearly U.S. citizens. The potentially problematic part is that the cloned cells that formed thereafter were placed into the uterus of a sheep named Dolly. Dolly, being a Swedish sheep, cannot qualify for U.S. citizenship.

Dolly surrogate sheep

How will the highest court in the land rule? Only time will tell. As for now, Romney and R2 are focusing on the upcoming campaign. In a television interview on Fox News with Sean Hannity, R2 had this to say:

“Over the past few years, I’ve seen many Republicans invoke my clone-father’s name for political gain, often misquoting and idealizing him and his policies as if he was some sort of conservative demi-god. I stood in silence for as long as I could, but I fear that the Republican Party has strayed too far from its original principles and risk creating an irreparable schism in this country that I love so much. My clone-father was a great man, but he had his faults just like any other man who would attempt to clone himself. He and I share physically and chemically identical brains, so it is my hope that I can bring real Reagan policies back to America, at least before I also die of Alzheimer’s Disease.”