Last updated on June 5th, 2014 at 11:50 pm
Republican Attorney General Greg Abbott is keeping it classy in Texas, where he refused to denounce the “Abortion Barbie” campaign posters that greeted Democratic state Senator Wendy Davis in California Thursday. It turns out that one of his supporters funded the posters.
Kathryn Stuard told the San Antonio Express-News “she donated an undisclosed amount to conservative street artist ‘Sabo’ to create the posters, which portray Davis’ face over a semi-naked Barbie doll with an exposed fetus in the womb.”
Sabo describes himself as a conservative and a Republican, according to San Antonio Express-News. Stuard claims that the campaign had nothing to do with the posters, she just felt like commissioning 20 of these nasty posters to greet Abbott’s Democratic rival for the Texas gubernatorial race, Wendy Davis, and Stuard just so happened to use the campaign strategy that Erick Erickson promised would alienate Latinos, in Los Angeles.
Wendy Davis’ campaign spokesman Zac Petkanas wasn’t surprised at Abbott’s lack of civility in refusing to denounce the posters, probably given that Greg Abbott once thanked a supporter for calling Wendy Davis “retard Barbie”.
Petkanas said in a statement, “Greg Abbott’s refusal to denounce these nasty campaign posters is offensive but not surprising. Whether it’s paying the women in his office less than men for doing the same work or campaigning with an admitted sexual predator, it seems that Greg Abbott can’t let a week go by without showing how out of touch he is with women. This is just another in a long line of offensive actions and comments by Greg Abbott in an attempt to demean Wendy Davis and women across Texas.”
Luckily for the Abbott campaign, this doesn’t seem too far off the mark for the Republican, given his own desperate, ugly personal attacks against Davis and her family, which only revealed that he knew nothing of the experience of single moms, women in general, married women, or daughters.
So this is what Wendy Davis faced in Los Angeles today, per Laura Bassett at the Huffington Post, all because Erick Erickson and a gang of right wingers think they can manipulate Hispanics this way:
Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis received a hostile greeting in Los Angeles Thursday morning, when life-sized posters depicting her as “Abortion Barbie” began popping up throughout the city ahead of her fundraiser there.
The posters say “Hollywood welcomes Abortion Barbie Wendy Davis,” and they show Davis’ face on a mostly-naked barbie doll with a plastic baby in her belly.
Erick Erickson started the whole “Abortion Barbie” thing because he read polling that told him that he could manipulate Hispanics by labeling Davis as an abortion candidate.
He told HuffPo, “There was polling in Texas done last year that an overwhelming majority of Hispanic voters between 18 and 30 would not vote for someone, regardless of party, if their number-one issue was abortion. It seemed very obvious, then, to go on and solidify Wendy Davis as a one-note wonder, a one-issue candidate on abortion. And it seems to have worked.”
Sadly, it seems that Erickson and Abbott don’t care that without medically safe abortions, women will die. Thus, Erickson took Davis’ filibuster for women’s rights against a most draconian Republican bill to close almost every abortion clinic in Texas personally and began calling Davis names, as if he were in junior high.
Hee-haw, titter titter, it’s Donald Sterling’s locker room y’all! Don’t you want that running Texas?
Since Abbott stood proudly with predator Ted Nugent, it shouldn’t surprise us that he won’t take a stand against “Abortion Barbie” posters. “Retard Barbie” was okay, so why not, eh? This lack of judgment is just another reason why Texans might not want Abbott making their medical decisions for them.
Maybe standing with the juveniles attacking Wendy Davis in such a thuggish way part of Greg Abbott’s big plan to get Texas women to vote for him, but I’m not sure hiding behind Erick Erickson and this woman who – wonders of wonders – independently chose to use Erickson’s campaign strategy against Davis is going to work.
Abbott should have the spine to stand up for all women, unless he thinks that certain women deserve to be treated like disposable garbage, in which case, Texans would probably like a list.
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