"Moreover, the Supreme Court has consistently held that the distinction between natural born citizens and naturalized citizens in the context of Presidential eligibility remains valid."
Just to be clear, There are two issues here.
I don't think anyone in the Constitutional Bar has ever thought seriously that the 14th Amendment repealed the Natural Born Citizen requirement for eligibility to hold the office of President under Article II, Section 1.
Neither has anyone ever seriously argued that a person who was not a citizen at birth but who first became a citizen as a result of a naturalization proceeding would be a Natural Born Citizen for this purpose.
The distinction drawn on efficacy of the 14th Amendment is with respect to persons who were citizens at birth as a result of their birth in the geographical territory of the several states.
There is no authority for the proposition that such a person (an individual born in the US) would ever have been held not eligible because of other factors. The overwhelming view has always been that such a person would be held Natural Born whoever his parents were or wherever they were born or citizens at the time of birth. In fact, the best legislative history demonstrates that the founders were concerned only about place of birth and sovereignty of the person that resulted.
However the point of the 14th Amendment was to insure that whatever the history of the person or his parents, if he was born in the US, he acquired the full benefit of all rights appurtenant to citizenship which would include the eligibility and right to hold the office of President.
Should the 14th operate in that fashion? Maybe not. But there isn't much doubt that is how the Supreme Court would come down if the issue were presented today.
If the 14th amendment did ANYTHING to create eligibility for someone simply on the basis of place of birth, then the equal protection clause would create that same right for persons who are naturalized. That’s the whole point of the equal protection clause ... EQUAL protection. The court can’t arbitrarily decide one class of citizens has special rights unless that class of citizen has citizenship that is defined outside of the 14th amendment. And that’s exactly what the Supreme Court did in Minor v. Happersett, citing a class of citizenship defined outside of the 14th amendment ... a class of citizenship due to birth to citizen parents and ... and a class of citizenship characterized exclusively as “natives, or natural born citizens” .... and this is what the court later affirmed in U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, Ex Parte Lockwood and Luria v. United States. Wong Kim Ark said it eloquently — when construing the 14th amendment, the Constitution does NOT say who shall be natural-born citizens. IOW, it’s not enough to be born on U.S. soil subject to the jurisdiction thereof to be a natural-born citizen. There’s no direct evidence to show that today’s Supreme Court would overturn the unanimous precedent of those decisions ... although they might try their hardest to avoid hearing any case that would put them in such a position.