This is big, big trouble for a campaign that didn't need any more trouble. Battleground Texas, a Democrat group integral to Wendy Davis' gubernatorial campaign (as she herself would have told you, until about an hour ago) is a pretty nasty crew. They're given to saying ugly, sometimes legally dubious things when hidden cameras are pointed at them. James O'Keefe and Project Veritas - a group that has been saluted for its effectiveness by no less than the Governor of New York - enjoy pointing hidden cameras at them.
The latest result brings us Battleground Texas staffers mocking Davis' Republican opponent, Greg Abbott, for being a paraplegic. (One of the many absurdities of the Texas race is that Davis doctored the hell out of her biography to make herself look like a hard-luck story, while Abboot was hit by a tree and paralyzed while jogging 30 years ago.)
The Battleground Texas clowns laugh about how it's "amazing to think" of how Abbott is stuck in a wheelchair while they want to "stand with Wendy." They can't believe he's doing so well in the race, because they think "he's not good looking, he doesn't speak very well, he doesn't have a good personality, and he's in a wheelchair."
They also think committing fraud on absentee is an amusing practice, which they are more than willing to tolerate. Obama's government is busy abusing power left and right to suppress dissident Tea Party groups (and now Hollywood conservatives!) on the pretext that they might be too partisan to get the kind of instant tax exemption approval that Obama for America got when it changed its name, but no one in the Justice Department seems to be keeping tabs on a Democrat group with an indulgent attitude towards outright voter fraud. No, we need volunteer video vigilantes for that.
Moe Lane has an interesting take on what the fallout from this new scandal means for Battleground Texas:
What James O???Keefe has demonstrated here is that Battleground Texas isn???t competent enough to make sure that anything told to them stays in confidence. If you are a Texas Democrat and you have ever spoken candidly to a Battleground Texas staffer, let this act as a not-friendly observation: you may have been recorded. You cannot trust any assurances from Battleground Texas that it did not happen in your case. And you had better hope that you didn???t say anything stupid, vile, and/or prosecutable.
Or maybe everyone involved will carry on as usual, serene in their confidence that neither the media or Justice Department will take an interest in anything stupid, vile, or prosecutable that gets caught on tape, because Democrats.
If the media can't shovel dirt over the new Project Veritas video fast enough to protect their beloved Wendy Davis, it's going to cause her some serious headaches. She really isn't in a position to denounce the group or distance herself from it. Standard procedure in these cases is to declare everyone caught on tape to be a "rogue element" who somehow wormed their way into the liberal group despite its usually lofty standards, and fire them... a process they get to repeat several times as each new undercover video drops.
Update: Wendy Davis denounces the comments captured in the Project Veritas video, as reported in the Texas Tribune, which bends over backwards to cushion the impact of the video by repeatedly stating that Davis wasn't at the meeting in question, and talking about what the Vertias expose "purports" to show:
The video released Thursday by Project Veritas purports to show footage from a meeting of Battleground Texas volunteers and another from a meeting of an Austin Democratic group. Shortly after its release, Davis, who was not in attendance at the meetings featured in the video, released a statement calling the language in it "abhorrent."
"Greg Abbott has persevered through great personal challenge to raise a family, have a productive career, and for that he deserves our respect," she said.
Davis' communications director immediately tries to shotgun her apology in the back:
Bo Delp, Davis' communications director, called the video one of O'Keefe's "trademark deceptive videos."
"O???Keefe is trying to create the impression that Wendy Davis attended this meeting and condones the language in this video," he said in a statement.
Battleground Texas spokesman Ellis Brachman said the video "says a lot more about Republicans than Battleground Texas: If they're desperate enough to use a well-known liar who has been repeatedly discredited by journalists, legal experts, and his own party to falsely attack us, they must be scared that voters are going to have a real choice at the ballot box this November.???
It's so "deceptive" to show what people actually said, with documentary evidence! Why do those desperate right-wingers keep messing up the beautiful Wendy Davis campaign narrative with the truth? And haven't any of you clowns figured out yet that O'Keefe always has another video coming?
