Wendy Davis regrets her open carry campaign stunt
She may regret it, but we enjoyed watching it crash and burn.
Back in February, then-gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis attempted to rock the boat by claiming that she supported Texas’ open carry movement.Her opponent Greg Abbott, an already-beloved-by-most Attorney General and popular favorite to win the election, already supported the measure, so perhaps at the time it seemed like a savvy move.
Texans love their guns, but they don’t love them that much. The Texas Democratic Party lashed out against her, Davis lost by 20, and her ill-fated run went down in history as one of the most embarrassing for Texas Democrats.
Now, she’s backpedaling on her open-carry stance. From the Daily Caller:
“There is one thing that I would do differently in that campaign, and it relates to the position that I took on open carry,” Davis told the San Antonio Express-News in her first interview since losing to Republican Greg Abbott last month.
“I made a quick decision on that with a very short conversation with my team and it wasn’t really in keeping with what I think is the correct position on that issue,” Davis continued.
…
Davis’ announcement came just weeks after her campaign suffered its first of many major blows when it was reported that she had fibbed about her background.Davis’ new admission on her open carry stance appears to support those critiques.
“Though I certainly support people’s right to own and to bear arms in appropriate situations, I fear with open carry, having watched that issue unfold during the campaign, that it will be used to intimidate and cause fear,” Davis told the Express-News.
“What I do know is that as an elected public servant, I’ve always been true to my core beliefs. Always. And I’m so proud of that,” she added. “And this was the only time I felt like I’d strayed a bit from that.”
If you look back on Davis’s campaign as a whole, this incident (and it truly was an “incident”—Texas politicos still talk about it) was a flash in the pan that provided a minor distraction from a transparently astroturfed campaign.
I was in Texas before and during the entire midterm cycle. I worked in the legislature for an active and involved representative. The first time I heard more than a peep from Wendy Davis was when she filibustered Texas’ latest abortion law (then subsequently made literally everything about abortion and women’s rights.) Battleground Texas worked overtime with the Davis campaign team and other left-leaning organizations to create hype over this woman. Instead of allowing her to run on her record, they played the rape card, the race card, and even made fun of the fact that her opponent is paralyzed from the waist down.
I’m not quite sure what Davis expected to gain from claiming to support open carry; maybe the support of moderates who were also undecided and single issue voters. But I think we can all agree that there was no need for her to come out and recant her statements about it.
Even fair weather voters know a campaign gimmick when they see one—and she was full of them.
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Comments
What a joke she was, and how transparently desperate was her little gambit with open carry.
Everybody knows nobody is ever going to take guns away from Texans and they’ll carry, open or otherwise, any damn time and place they want to. Texas LEO are loathe to nitpick over minor carry/ammo/etc. niceties, except for a few lemmings in the urban areas. You have to be pretty far out of line and forcing LEO to take notice of you in order to have a problem.
So Davis was blowing smoke as she boarded a bandwagon that’s been circling the great state of TX for going on 200 years. BFD, Wendy.
“I made a quick decision on that with a very short conversation with my team and it wasn’t really in keeping with what I think is the correct position on that issue.”
Translation: “I was willing to say pretty much anything in order to get elected.” It reminds me of the Romney campaign adviser’s idiotic ‘etch-a-sketch’ comment.
http://mashable.com/2012/03/21/romney-etch-a-sketch/
The low-information voters may be swayed by skimming the headlines but (oh, I hope it’s true!) most of the American people are well-informed and respond to honest, principled leadership.
On the other hand, Barack Obama was elected…twice. *sigh*
Is she hoping to score some Bloomburg campaign money so she can try to get re-elected to her State office?
Regret? No way. It was a calculated lie. Now, with no more reason to pursue the lie, she is reestablishing her credibility with the Left.
She’s an ass.
But anyone who would buy into her lies would be bugger asses.
No, the real story is that left got what they deserved.
Wendy Davis got donated a bunch of money by conning the left into thinking she had a chance. Millions of dollars worth in fact.
The bit with Open Carry was meant to show the left how she planned to con the right into falling for her.
Thankfully for us, people like James O’Keefe and his Project Veritas exposed this kind of deception through out the country.
Did she “con” the Left? I think the Left is self-deluded into thinking that voters would flock to her apparent dedication to unrestricted abortion. (Maybe that in itself was deception.)
The hell we don’t love our guns that much, not sure where you came up with that, and we sure as hell do want Open Carry. There are what, four bills (last I heard) floating on Open Carry? Abbott has said he’ll sign it if it’s put on his desk, hopefully it will be the one taking off the restriction of CC. But no one, and I mean NO ONE believed her about anything, especially on this one.
As another blogging law professor once said, if liberals didn’t have double standards, they’d have no standards at all. Heh!
“I made a quick decision on that with a very short conversation with my team and it wasn’t really in keeping with what I think is the correct position on that issue,” Davis continued.
ie. Davis just adopted whatever position her handlers thought would get her votes. She’s a Gruberette.
She’ll be fine – word is she’s found herself another Sugar Daddy.
I wonder what a CarpetBagger / SugarDaddy pairing produces?