Cornyn Called Out Over Short Memory on Gun Control
Members of Congress pop off on X, formerly Twitter, all the time. It’s one of the more important uses of the platform for them, but there’s a risk there.
See, you can chirp all you want, but people get to chirp back. You’re not really immune from criticism and it’s really kind of impossible to create a true echo chamber, even if that’s your desire. People will still say what they want to say and say it where you can see it, at least until you mute or block them or something.
That’s a lesson Sen. John Cornyn of Texas was reminded of on Wednesday evening.
After trying to get a dig in at his primary opponent, Texas AG Ken Paxton, he was asked a simple question based on the wording.
I mean, it wasn’t that long ago, so the smart move would have been to just ignore it.
Cornyn, however, isn’t that smart.
Seriously?
If that’s true, his mind is as gone as Biden’s.
Luckily, Texas Gun Rights was happy to remind him.
That’s right, Cornyn was the primary reason we got saddled with the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. He rallied enough Republican votes to break the filibuster, thus foisting gun control onto the American people, which came with a lot of issues that we’re still trying to deal with.
Cornyn was awfully proud of it at the time. He celebrated it. He bragged about his efforts.
It wasn’t until after that that he suddenly started trying to play damage control.
Now, he’s just trying to pretend it never happened. Of all the tactics for deflecting criticism for bad decisions, that’s certainly one of them.
I get that Cornyn doesn’t want to have to defend his Second Amendment record in Texas, of all places, and that’s one area where Paxton is going to eat his lunch and everyone knows it. It’s obvious that on this issue in particular, he’s going to lose.
But could he (or at least his social media team) have just ignored the comment? Absolutely. The smart move would have just pretended he didn’t see it. I’d imagine a senator’s X notifications get a lot of comments, so it’s easy to legitimately miss things. Pretending that’s what happened would have been cowardly, but still smart.
Or, he could have tried to defend it, or admitted that he screwed up royally. I’d have at least respected the latter, at least. I’d still want him gone because there’s no way I’d trust him not to screw up like that again, but I respect a lawmaker admitting they made an error, if for no other reason than it’s so rare. He didn’t do that, though.
Instead, he just played Biden…I mean, dumb (same thing, really).
Well, Cornyn might have a short memory–I don’t buy it, but let’s play like he’s being honest here–but the internet doesn’t. He did Biden’s bidding to help get the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act passed, was proud of the effort, and now he’s playing dumb because his constituents aren’t happy about it and he thinks so little of them that he thinks a denial like this will work.
