San Antonio Express-News reporter Peggy Fikac runs a story in which she attempts to tie Texas Republican governor nominee Greg Abbott to a little misstep made by a fellow Republican who is several states away.
The subject is state-level bans on interracial marriage, which were struck down by courts decades ago. They are not relevant today, but reporters like Fikac are attempting to equate them with the current trend of courts striking down bans on same-sex marriage. And Wendy Davis’ campaign is running with that.
Texas AG Greg Abbott Doesn’t Know If He Would’ve Defended Bans on Interracial Marriage 50 Years Ago http://t.co/ykQexLCgjW
— Zac Petkanas (@Zac_Petkanas) October 20, 2014
That’s the spokesman Davis imported from Harry Reid’s smear shop, demonstrating his total lack of honesty, facts and sense.
It didn’t take Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott any time at all to decide that not answering that question was the best course during a meeting with the San Antonio Express-News Editorial Board.
“Right now, if there was a ban on interracial marriage, that’s already been ruled unconstitutional,” Abbott pointed out. “And all I can do is deal with the issues that are before me … The job of an attorney general is to represent and defend in court the laws of their client, which is the state Legislature, unless and until a court strikes it down.”
When I said I wasn’t clear if he was saying he would have defended a ban on interracial marriage, he said, “Actually, the reason why you’re uncertain about it is because I didn’t answer the question. And I can’t go back and answer some hypothetical question like that.”
Asked about the similarities some see between the ban on gay marriage and past prohibitions on interracial marriage, Abbott said, “Well, the Supreme Court has disagreed with that” by holding that sexual orientation isn’t due protected-class status in the way that race is.
What Abbott is doing there is staying away from hypotheticals, in this case, one set up by the media to help Democrats who favor gay marriage and who want some issue to use against their Republican opponents. It’s a gotcha, and everyone — the media, Abbott, everyone — knew that.
Why is it a “gotcha”? Because there’s no way to answer it and satisfy the press, and the media hardly ever uses the same technique against Democrats. Go one way and you get the report above, go another and you get “Abbott disagrees with fellow Republicans,” go another and you get the media putting him on the defensive in some other way.
In this case, Wendy Davis admitted that she would violate current state law, but media evidently did not follow up or chase her down on that, so she is not being forced to defend that.
“I do,” she said in her meeting with the San Antonio Express-News Editorial Board. “I think it’s a very fair comparison in that the time has … come for us to move forward in understanding that we’ve been kind of stuck in the same place that our country was stuck when it had the ban on interracial marriage. And I’m pleased to see the rapid advancement that is happening around the country in us accepting that and moving forward in a more productive way.”
Davis has called on Abbott to stop defending both Texas’ gay marriage ban and its public education finance system, which is being challenged in court by school districts.
Wendy Davis wants the Texas attorney general to violate his official duties under state law.
Abbott is the state attorney general. It is his job to defend state laws, whether he personally agrees with them or not. Davis has just admitted that she does not care what state law says — she will do whatever she wants based on her own personal opinions and whatever she believes will benefit her and/or her political party. That’s not how either our state or the national government is supposed to work. Barack Obama has delivered six years of that now, and it’s not serving America well at all. Wendy Davis would give us the same type of government overreach and assault that Annise Parker is delivering in Houston.
In the case of Abbott and interracial marriage, his life story just might provide a big clue that Davis and her Harry Reid import and the media here have missed. Greg Abbott is himself half of an interracial marriage. His wife, Cecilia, is the granddaughter of immigrants from Mexico. She is Hispanic.
If Wendy Davis and her team had any self-awareness at all they would just stop, right now, and forget this line of attack. But they don’t and they won’t. They are nasty, childish and divisive little twits who cannot help themselves. Texans will reward them properly at the voting booth.
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