Christine O’Donnell, Delaware’s Tea Party nominee for Senate, showed constituents once again that she is an unqualified candidate.
Last week, in a debate at Widener University Law School, O’Donnell and her Democratic opponent Chris Coons debated about the place of intelligent design and evolution in public schools.
Coons argued that evolution has no place in public schools, and that parents should use church as the way for their children to gain religious education.
Christine O’Donnell, on the other hand, argued that local communities have the right to decide what is taught in schools — even if that includes the concept of intelligent design.
What happened next has turned into an Internet frenzy, causing voters to question O’Donnell’s understanding of the Constitution, and rightfully so.
Coons argued that one of the founding principles of the United States is the separation of church and state. To that, O’Donnell replied, “Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?”
The audience erupted into laughter, shocked that O’Donnell asked such a foolish question about a document that she praises and deems “indispensable.” O’Donnell boasts that she once took an 8-week seminar on the Constitution.
In O’Donnell’s defense, it is true that the exact words “separation of church and state” are not found in the Constitution. Actually, separation of church and state is a phrase credited to Thomas Jefferson in 1802.
However, it is obvious that O’Donnell’s question was not intended to articulate that the phrase “separation of church and state” is not found in the Constitution.
O’Donnell, after asking the question, smiled at the audience, genuinely surprised at their laughter. She did not bother to explain or expand on what she meant. She simply sat there, smiling. If O’Donnell had meant to express that the exact words “separation of church and state” are not found in the Constitution, why didn’t she bother to say so?
Later in the debate, O’Donnell asked Coons to clarify what he meant by separation of church and state. He began to quote the first line of the First Amendment, “The government shall make no establishment of...” only to be interrupted by O’Donnell. “That’s in the First Amendment?” she asked.
If citizens were not previously concerned about O’Donnell’s qualifications, they certainly should be now. She may have the charm, no witch pun intended, but she does not have the intellect.
A Newsweek article claims that conservatives and O’Donnell go wrong by “insisting that their idealized document is the country’s one true Constitution,” and that “there are many Constitutions: the Constitution of 1789, of 1864, of 1925, of 1936, of 1970, of today.”
Perhaps the saddest thing is that O’Donnell supporters seem unaware of O’Donnell’s ignorance. O’Donnell and other members of the Tea Party base their movement on an agenda to change the Constitution. I would think and hope that they would at least have a comprehensive grasp of the document before doing that.
An article released by Associated Content was titled, “O’Donnell should plead the Fifth on First Amendment ignorance.” That is sage advice, but I doubt Ms. O’Donnell is listening.
Contact Emilie at eeeaton@asu.edu
