Right on all counts. Because in the Founders' day and on up throughout American history, up until people started obfuscating the issue 4 years ago, practically everyone has always understood that born in America, citizen at birth = natural born citizen.
It is indeed exceedingly simple.
I find it quite peculiar, given the rigorous economy with words for which the Framers of the Constitution were justifiably famous, that some believe “born citizen” and “natural-born citizen” were intended to be terms of art with identical meaning.
I find it even more peculiar that these presumably interchangeable terms of art are taken to have different meanings, depending upon geographic circumstance on the one hand and circumstance of familial relation on the other, conceptually combining the two and yet those individuals actually possessing both qualities were purportedly not deemed worthy of note.
Linguistically and logically, it’s assumed that the greatest, most learned legal minds of the era used two terms interchangeably for not just one but two conditions, while leaving yet another condition so completely ill-defined as to have never coined a term for it.
Very uncharacteristic, that. You’d think they’d have been more precise. Some of us understand that they were more precise, even rigorous, with terms for all three conditions consistently applied.
But, we don’t know what we’re talking about, say those who insist upon equating two different terms and applying them in inconsistent ways, while rendering some closely related, pertinent states wholly unacknowledged.