By Dave Andrusko
Pro-abortion Texas state Senator Wendy Davis and Pro-life Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott
It would not be true to say I scoured the major pro-abortion Texas newspapers last night and this morning, but I did skim many of their stories. And while the Texas Tribune surely got it right when it wrote,” As the night lengthened on Tuesday, the real contest, it seemed, was to find a fitting description as to how thoroughly Democrats were taken to the woodshed both in Texas and nationally,” I’ll be darned if I could find the actual tally in the race for governor.
You remember that contest—feminist/pro-abortion “icon” Wendy Davis (she of the 2013 filibuster fame) was going to turn Texas politics on its head by winning every female vote in sight, carrying 90% of the Hispanic vote, yada, yada, yada. Pro-life Attorney General Greg Abbott would be just an accidental bystander, run over by the Davis bus.
A funny thing happened on the way to the state capitol. With almost 99% of the votes tallied, POLITICO reported that Abbott had won an overwhelming victory. He’d carried 59% the vote to 38.9% for Davis, with a winning margin of over 950,000 votes. If this holds true, Davis will finish further behind than both of the previous two Democratic candidates for governor.
New York Times columnist Ross Douthat did not exaggerate in the slightest when he labeled Davis and now-outgoing Colorado Senator Mark Udall “abortion absolutists.” Davis’s absolutism won her…what? According to an analyst provided by the Dallas Morning News (which swooned for Davis)
* “Abbott carried men and women, a group that in the past has lined up solidly behind Democrats. It was a stunner for Davis, who had targeted women and touted her efforts in support of abortion rights and fair-pay laws. She especially had hoped to appeal to Republican women, but got only 4 percent of their votes.”
* “Abbott scored support from 44 percent of Hispanics.”
* How about vote by educational attainment? “Abbott won across the board, outpacing Davis among high school graduates, those with some college, college graduates and those with postgraduate work.”
You get the picture. Davis had been carried aloft on the shoulders of the usual suspects and feted by the Abortion Establishment which poured money into her race. Writing for the hyper pro-abortion Mother Jones magazine, Tim Murphy described the early hoopla and the final outcome.
Texas Democrats started the 2014 election cycle with a dream of turning the state blue for the first time in two decades, buoyed by a progressive hero on the ballot and an influx of outside cash and organizers. Instead, the nation’s biggest red state just got even redder. On Tuesday, for the fifth consecutive cycle, Texas Republicans swept statewide offices, including the race for governor, where Republican attorney general Greg Abbott cruised past Democratic state Sen. Wendy Davis.
No doubt Davis will find a place on MSNBC or somewhere else similarly obscure and irrelevant. Clearly the voters of Texas had no use for her abortion absolutism.