Wendy Davis following Elizabeth Warren family-defense and press-control scripts
But Texas is not Massachusetts, so it may not work this time.
When Elizabeth Warren’s fake Cherokee status broke in late April 2012, Warren’s campaign went into panic for several days, issuing statements about Warren’s ancestry that proved troublesome when compared to the facts. The entire issue was portrayed as a Scott Brown campaign dirty trick, and the Boston Herald — the city’s not-completely-liberal paper — was attacked.
Warren even entertained questions herself initially, reciting tales of her Aunt Bee and high cheekbones which both were laughable and questionable.
Not that long after the Cherokee narrative broke, and endangered her campaign, Warren’s campaign found a theme — don’t attack my family, I’m not backing away from my parents — and stuck to it relentlessly. With a mostly sympathetic press in tow, Warren somewhat successfully reframed the issue away from her demeaning usurpation of Native American identity for employment purposes to why people were attacking her family.
Warren also went into media shutdown, refusing to answer any questions except when confronted in unavoidable situations. Even then, Warren robotically stuck to the stript of defending her family.
Warren avoided one-on-one interviews with anyone other than sycophants until the day before the Massachusetts Democratic state convention, when the Cherokee narrative threatened to derail Warren’s attempt to keep her only Democratic rival, Marisa DeFranco, off the ballot. The convention-eve interviews, where Warren of course stuck to script, were enough to quiet party concerns, and DeFranco was kept off the ballot.
I don’t know if Warren’s false narrative ever would have doomed her campaign, considering it was Massachusetts, but the script and press control worked for electoral purposes.
Fast forward to Wendy Davis.
When her political and personal narrative of being a single mom who lived in a trailer and clawed her way through college and law school was revealed to be misleading, at best, Davis’ campaign struggled for the first week. It flailed away at the Abbott campaign, the reporter from the Dallas Morning News, and played the misogyny card.
After Davis’ campaign gained some footing, it went full-Warren with a theme of defending her family. While Warren at least had the decency to keep her family members off stage, Davis rolled out her two daughters to defend her.
Davis also is exercising tight press access control, cancelling a major interview the day after the story broke, and closing out all the press save for the Texas Tribune, from the event at which Davis’ daughters spoke.
But Texas is not Massachusetts. Not only is the electorate more Republican and conservative, the Texas press is not a bunch of political sycophants.
As Bryan Preston at PJ Media documents, via Instapundit, Davis now is at war with the press over being shut out:
And the press is fighting back at her strategy:
In any case, I don’t know whether the press strategy of the Davis campaign is of her own choosing, or whether she is being cocooned by an overprotective staff. If it’s the latter, perhaps it’s time for Davis’ supportera outside her campaign organization to raise the cry, “Free Wendy!”
Wendy Davis is no Elizabeth Warren. Massachusetts liberals loved Warren for reasons having nothing to do with the Native American narrative, about which they knew nothing until so deeply in love nothing would shake them. The false narrative meant nothing to them, any more so than Chappaquiddick would dampen their love for the Liberal Lion of the Senate.
Without Davis’ narrative, what is there to her campaign? Abortion? That won’t do it in Texas.
Free Wendy? I doubt it will happen.
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Next Wendy Davis will be digging up Jefferson Davis as a defense of her new kind of Democrat Slavery.
Selling daughters into slavery isn’t pretty.
SNARK SNARK – for all the humor neutered.
So basically Wendy Davis is trying to treat the Texas press like two-bit street walkers.
Wendy Davis: “Shut Up! Lay Down! Shut Up! Lay Down!”
Don’t underestimate her.
Wendy will self destruct herself. There is no crying in Texas politics.
What I don’t underestimate are the things we don’t see going on with OfA’s Battleground Texas. Shelia Jackson warned us that OfA has a data basing operation like no one has ever seen before and we know that they can deliver highly personal phone calls directly to voters. Those messages will by pass the general public since there will be no record of them and no way to corroborate what is said.
So you’re saying “Only the NSA Knows?” oh yes and Snowden!!!
As NSA has records of the phone calls that everyone has made and the Tyrant has the phone numbers of the progressive fascists it should be easy to construct a list of productive targets for fund raising, telephone calls and campaign literature.
Texas has made some dubious choices of late, not the least of which is the push for Sharia in school books and the banning of Christmas songs in elementary schools. Granted, Rick Perry did sign some bill that made Christmas “legal” in Texas, but the fact that this was even needed in Texas, of all states, speaks volumes about the inroads the regressive left have made there. Leftists have been chipping away at both Florida and Texas, and if Davis wins the governorship, they’ll have won. It will remain to be seen if they’ve won just one battle or the war.
Texas has a long and colorful history of kooks, including some of the worst of Progressives/Communists (c.f., Maury Maverick, LBJ, Ann Richards, etc.).
My sense is that Texas is MUCH more conservative than at any point in my (rather long) memory.
Which is not to say we don’t have to suffer nutballs and tyrants. We certainly DO. We just beat them down, more or less.
My first thought was Kinky Friedman.
Texas is too big, too broad to be anything but eclectic, and it’s the microcosm of America that California used to be. Or at least it ought to be.
Some Christian evangelicals support moves to remove Christmas and other holidays from the schools because they would rather see no mention of them at all over the heavily secularized-and commercialized versions deemed suitable in schools.
OK…. that’s it. You, professor, are definitely OFF Wendy’s Christmas card list.
While on a trip to Alaska, hubby and I met a nice couple, he a pilot; she a teacher from Massachusetts. Hubby being curious asked them why Ted Kennedy was so popular given the history he had. It was a perfectly good question not asked out of malice or anything near it. You would have thought we committed the most evil ever. One time hubby was playing golf and asked pretty much the same question to a golfing partner. who was from MA. Again, the same thing. All avoided us like the plague. They are just like that. No open minds; just robot like following. Sad.
Wendy Davis should never be Governor of TX. She isn’t equipped. She is nothing but a front and I can’t understand why her supporters don’t see it.
They see it, they know she isn’t qualified. But they assume she will appoint Democrats to all the patronage positions, and that’s all they care about in the end.
You didn’t believe they rallied behind Obama because they thought he was qualified, did you?
They know she will advance abortion in TX just like they knew that Obama would advance race-mongering. Democrats don’t have a thing to say to us without tossing these two things into the ring.
Of course not; however, you might except them to have a little more sense than God gave a gnat.
When you can’t defend the indefensible, you tend to shun the people you make you realize it. It’s hard to look somebody in the eye and tell them you voted for a corrupt, woman-abusing SOB just to spite the GOP.
I expected it pretty much. However, not to that extent. My husband was dumbfounded. In fact, we watched the Ayers vs DSousa debate. Husband not knowing who either was asked who the clown(Ayers)was and really liked DSousa. Thought he had a real grasp and knowledge of things. Said Ayers read a lot between the lines without reading the lines.
Betcha the following kind of speech will be made by someone before long …
“Wendy, you need to look in the mirror to see who is attacking your family. You set them aside when they were an inconvenient obstacle for you to reach your dreams. You divorced one after he had made the last payment for your dream with money meant for his retirement.
You have made your family sacrifice for you again and again. In the past and now.
You have lived a life in which others have made financial and emotional sacrifices for you to reach your goals.
And now, you want Texans to sacrifice their vote so you can be their governor.
Wendy, you need to understand. That job is for a giver, not a taker!”
“You have lived a life in which others have made financial and emotional sacrifices for you to reach your goals.”
Well then, no one can say she doesn’t have the experience necessary to be a politician.
Think of all the California types who moved to Texas recently. You think they’re going to vote GOP? They’re going to create the same mess they left behind in CA, and their mess always begins at the ballot box. So, nobody’s going to tell her that because TX welcomed the CA virus into its body politic.
Maybe.
I’ll never forget talking to a tall, dark, handsome, gay guy from New York shortly after a “gay rights” ordinance in Houston failed to pass. It even failed to pass in the Montrose area (local gay district.) It turns out, he voted against the ordinance because he’d never encountered any discrimination based on his orientation, and he was not going to vote for an ordinance that wasn’t needed.
Texas tends to attract people with a Texan kind of attitude. If they don’t settle in Austin, they may be ok.
You are so right and some might be surprised to find out how many gays don’t vote gay.
Not to mention that she used her children to defend herself!
I happen to think she’s going to do very well in this race. In any case, it’s all about softening the target for the long game. The Right still has no idea how to deal with leftists. This is a huge problem.
Maybe we should set up those 2 for 1 illegal voting machines like the Dems do.
If Warren was a Republican she would have been blown away at the ballot box. Wendy Davis would need a miracle to win an election in Texas even if she didn’t have honesty problems.
CA Democrats will vote Democrat in TX.
Wendy is free! Someone let her out!
That is the problem. Someone let her out of her…..
“Free Wendy?”
not according to her second husband…..
When do we get to rip up her “sad and extremely awkward firearms photo op”? Because there is so much territory to cover on that topic that it needs to be it’s own thread!
If you are going to hold a shotgun for the cameras it might help to look like you know what you are doing.
Something tells me that the choice of an expensive side by side is not going to endear her to many Texas gun owners either.
She held up what they handed her and did not accidentally discharge it.
The way her campaign is going, this was a win!
No worries man….she’ll Dick Cheney it real soon…..
Guess where her next pedicure is coming from?
RE: “[Sen. Warren] reciting tales of her Aunt Bee and high cheekbones which both were laughable and questionable.”
And racist. Oh wait, Warren is a democrat, so she can’t be accused of saying anything racist — even when she did.
RE: “Without Davis’ narrative, what is there to her campaign?”
She’s a woman. In the eyes of many, she gets a pass from any lies she says, any laws she broke, any flaws in her character, and any holes in her resume.
Is that enough to get her elected in Texas? I hope not.
Warren got away with it in Massachusetts.
Sec. Clinton will probably do the same and become President.
… The Liberal Lion of the Senate – he’s still good and dead, right?
He’s still dead.
He was never good.
Don’t say that too loudly.
That state’s voters will run him – though even dead – if the can.
Don’t be surprised if the Lion still votes about a million times.
Looking at her with that gun, she sure is no Sarah Palin.
Wendy Davis is cut from the same cloth as Liz Warren – the blanket lie.
The caption for the above picture: “Wendy Davis takes pot shots at the Abbott Campaign”
no one shoots side-bys in Texas. If she wanted to hold a gun that rich gun owners would identify with, she would have held a over/under. If she wanted to hold one the masses identify with, a pump. Her right hand is in the wrong place, I think she has never held a shotgun.
Sdharms – you are exactly right. She doesn’t know how to hold a shotgun because it is her first time handling one. And her handlers don’t know either because they are girlie men who haven’t a clue about firearms. This is a phony, staged photo op if I ever saw one. She’s all hat, no cattle as they say in Texas.