Otto's excellent Rec List-topping diary, O'Donnell "...that's in the First Amendment?" brings to mind a fundamental question: Can we, at long last, call an idiot "an idiot"?
I know Chris Coons is trying to be respectful because that's what his handlers are probably telling him to do. "You've got a big lead. Don't risk it by riling up the opposition. Don't give her an opening by insulting her. You'll just look like an elitist and a bully."
Here's the thing: O'Donnell was trying to bully Coons with her pushy ignorance...her faux expertise. She's not even an idiot savant. She's just an idiot. Like a number of other Tea Party candidates and even a few current Republican office-holders, she's promoting irrational, unthinking idiocy. The thinking being if you do it loud enough and sound sure enough, you'll convince a whole bunch of know-nothing voters to support you. That strategy has clearly been vindicated in small doses, at least.
Because Republican officeholders and Tea Party candidates alike are pushing an agenda based on bogus constitutional understandings, on rejections of sound science, on fiscal policies that make no fiscal sense, we need leaders who will take them to task.
What's really needed is for our leaders to call out this bullshite for what it is. I wish Coons had taken the moment to say something along this line:
"Yes, the 1st Amendment, which says 'Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.' Any religion. Because this country was founded by people who fled religious oppression in European nations that had no such restriction on the government -- where there was one State religion and any dissenters -- people who believed in other religions or other interpretations -- were persecuted. The 1st Amendment doesn't just mean "no law", and it doesn't just restrict Congress, because that's what the courts -- the Supreme Court and the lesser courts do -- they take the legal text and ask 'how do we give that real meaning?' So, the courts have told us that the government is just supposed to stay out of promoting religion in any way, including public schooling. Schools can teach a history of religion, because religions are a big part of history, but they can't promote a particular religious idea. That would be the beginnings of a government-established religion. It's prohibited by the Constitution.
We call that "separation of" Church and State". The Amendment doesn't use that phrase -- that phrase was used to help non-lawyers understand what the lawyers meant when they drafted the Amendment.
I'm sorry you didn't learn this stuff in your 7th grade American History class, or your 10th grade American Government class. These ideas aren't really debatable. We're talking about settled law, that gives meaning to the 1st Amendment -- that gives all of us the religious freedom that the founders of this country sought and fought for. I'm sorry you didn't learn this stuff in grade school but people turned out to hear us discuss the issues -- not some political equivalent of fake professional wrestling.
I'm sorry that you think an eight-day seminar from an extremist conservative group makes you an expert on Constitutional law. It doesn't. I'm sorry we're up here wasting everybody's time discussing things you should have learned in grade school. I'm sorry the small number of people who turned out to vote in the Republican primary chose to vote for someone who doesn't have the understanding of our political system that any high school graduate should have. I'm sorry I don't have an opponent that I can debate the real issues with, because I know that's the debate that most of the voters in Delaware want to hear.
I'm prepared to debate the real issues in this campaign. I've set aside the time to come and do that but if my opponent wants to 'debate' things she should have learned in grade school, we're going to waste a lot of time and squander a precious opportunity. I have a commitment to be here, but those voters out there don't. If we keep up this nonsense, they're just going to walk away - the smart ones, anyway. The ones who actually learned this stuff in high school and aren't going to be helped by this debate. Maybe, that's all you really want, but I think that would be a devastating blow to the democracy we've been working on for 225 years."
That's what I would like to hear from Coons and other candidates who are up against know-nothing candidates like Christine O'Donnell. When the other side has put up an idiot to run against you, stand up and say:
"That's an idiot, over there. That's your REAL choice. Someone who paid attention in school, someone who is trying to make the rational best choices for our country versus someone who doesn't know what she is talking about and is just making it up as she goes along to fit her narrow world-view." "I'm offering you smarter government, and they're offering you stupidity. It's that simple."
Can I get an "Amen"?
****Update: I've changed the diary title because I think folks are missing the point, by focusing on Coons and whether he did well in deflecting O'Donnell's attack. This diary was never really supposed to be about Coons or even O'Donnell specifically. It's about the idiocy that has been pouring forth on the right for years now, and is pushing the GOP in frightening direction -- which is really dangerous, given the predictions that this extremist version of the GOP may soon come to power.
I address some of these concerns more fully in the comments, and I'll leave that discussion there. I hope that my diary is better understood. As I wrote there -- the fable about how the Emperor Has No Clothes is really instructive about the current state of the GOP. Someone who matters -- someone the media will pay attention to, because there's an election -- needs to stand up and point out the sheer idiocy that's being passed out as political policy from the right these days. I focused on O'Donnell because she presents the perfect opening.