This doesn’t clarify. I just now heard the actual audio on Rush. The statement by Coons to which she was responding include both a reference to separation and to non-establishment, equating the two. So her “You’re telling me that’s in the First Amendment” was her stringing him along, to get him to confirm that “separation” was in the 1st Amendment. The journalist omitted the “separation” and mentioned only the “non-establishment.”
So yes, she was absolutely right but the way it is being quoted is misleading.
But, just from a tactical standpoint, she would have helped herself by “teaching” him at that moment, saying to him, “Yes, non-establishment is in there, but separation is not.” From Rush, just now, apparently she twice strung him along, asking ‘that’s in the 1st Amendment” a second time. Obviously from the laughter of the audience, they were ignorant of her point—the distinction between separation and non-establishment. They laughed when she first asked him “where is separation in the Constitution.”
Three times she tried to trap him into an error that all of us know about. She should instead have, once he entered the trap the first time, sprung it shut and told him and the audience about the distinction and why it matters.
If her audience had been a bunch of Freepers, he’d have egg on his face. But her audience and the media audience didn’t “get” the distinction and by failing to nail it down, she created their sound bite for them.
It’s a missed opportunity. She was trying to be too clever by half.
I hope she wins, I have defended her again and again. But this was a tactical mistake.
Rush just covered this. Yes, she made the mistake of assuming that the audience would be as informed as the 50th percentile of conservatives is.
Right, the media is full out lying.