Republicans Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell agree: No separation of church and state

Democratic campaign operatives around the country will tell you privately that it frustrates them that Christine O’Donnell’s various eccentricities get so much more media attention than GOP gaffes do in races that Dems view as winnable.

Case in point: O’Donnell is getting a massive amount of attention today because during a debate with Chris Coons, she asked: “Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?”

But Sharron Angle said something very similar a couple months back and it got almost no national attention. During an interview with Jon Ralston, he confronted her over her 1995 statement that excluding religious schools from Federal funding is un-American and that the separation of church and state is an unconstitutional doctrine. Then this exchange ensued:

RALSTON: The separation of church and state arises out of the Constitution.

ANGLE: No it doesn’t, John.

RALSTON: Oh, it doesn’t? The Founding Fathers didn’t believe in the separation of church and state?

ANGLE: Thomas Jefferson has been misquoted, like I’ve been misquoted, out of context. Thomas Jefferson was actually addressing a church and telling them through his address that there had been a wall of separation put up between the church and the state precisely to protect the church from being taken over by a state religion. That’s what they meant by that. They didn’t mean we couldn’t bring our values to the political forum.