Ken Buck and "separation of church and state"
A recent news story on the Tea Party movement refers to "Colorado’s Ken Buck, who says he opposes the principle of separation of church and state." That got me curious, in part because I have found other assertions about Tea Party backed candidates to be less than accurate, so I googled around and eventually found a video of Ken Buck speaking on the subject. I am guessing that this is the origin of the claim, but I actually don't know—I was unable to find anyone who made the claim and supported it with an actual quote from Buck.
The video is on a Huffington Post page; to their credit they do not claim that he opposes the principle, only that he "has called for a 'much closer relationship' between church and state." What he actually says in the video, after mentioning the existence of state religions in Europe at the time the Constitution was written, is:
… the freedom of religion in this country in my view was meant to be a freedom from state imposed religion. I can’t tell you what god you are going to pray to, you can’t tell me, and that is, that is one of the great things of, in this country. The idea that church and state should be separated is fine with me. The idea that there should be no interrelationship between the two is not fine with me. I think that the separation of church and state is much different than our founding fathers intended it to be and we would be much better off with a closer relationship between church and state. Not a state sponsored religion and not religion dictating to the state public policy but a much closer relationship.”
He goes on to speak of the fact that Bush had a number of “faith based programs” that “I think are appropriate.”
Perhaps there is some other evidence to support the claim that Buck says he opposes the separation of church and state—commenters are invited to offer some. As it stands now, it looks as though the claim is simply false, one more example of the willingness of journalists to say things without any good reason to believe they are true.
Provided, of course, that the things they say fit their own views.
I should probably add, given the earlier discussion of O'Donnell, that Buck looks, based on what I have found so far, to be a considerably more articulate and intelligent candidate than she is. That is based in part on the Huffington Post video, in part on an interesting piece by a liberal interviewer.