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On Tuesday, Jeff Davis declined CNN’s request to appear in an on-camera interview regarding Wendy Davis’ personal life story. Instead, he gave them an email response stating that he feels that Wendy Davis “would make a very capable governor.” This was not only an instance of Mr. Davis showing the utmost respect for his ex-wife and her current situation, but also his refusal to play the media ‘gotcha’ game that the GOP was hoping for. He is not allowing himself to get caught up in a non-story that is only out there in an attempt to bring down a person that scares the crap out of the Republican Party and Texas conservatives.

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This all stems from supposed ‘discrepancies’ in Wendy Davis’ past comments about her life. Basically, Republicans are trying to discredit her story that she went from being a young, single mother who lived in a trailer and that she was able to work her way up through Harvard Law School and is now on the verge up being Governor of Texas. Since conservatives in Texas see her as a huge threat to the political status quo there, recently they’ve decided to play semantics with the details and question her honesty.

Due to an article that was published on Sunday in the Dallas Morning News, Republicans, and especially her gubernatorial opponent Greg Abbott’s campaign, have grabbed hold of the narrative that Davis did not have it nearly as hard as she’s stated and that she is a liar. And since she is a liar and a fake, she cannot be trusted. Essentially, they are making it seem like she had an easy road to get where she is now and that things were never tough for her. That she made it all up. In fact, conservatives made #MoreFakeThanWendyDavis trend on Twitter earlier this week.

Davis herself decided to address this ‘controversy’ head on, and released a bullet-point, detailed history of her adult life. While she didn’t technically get divorced until she was 21, she was separated from her first husband when she was 19 and lived in a trailer at that point with her daughter. Therefore, her saying she was a single mother living in a trailer when she was 19 may not be ‘technically’ correct, but only an obtuse a-hole would make an issue of it.

Apparently, another issue for the Republicans is that Wendy Davis hasn’t given enough credit to her second husband regarding the assistance he gave towards her getting her law degree at Harvard. While this is completely false, as she has on many times in interviews stated that Jeff Davis was pivotal in helping her achieve her current position, it shouldn’t be surprising that a husband assists his wife financially and vice versa. That is what marriage is. The family finances go towards all of the family members. Why was it necessary for Wendy Davis to have to explain that they used money form her husband’s 401(k) loan to help pay for tuition?

Thankfully, Jeff Davis isn’t playing along with the narrative that the media and Republicans want to play out. In his email to CNN, he even stated that while the 401(k) loan was used partially to help pay for Wendy’s tuition, he did it for other reasons. Because, you know, those are decisions that families have to make when it comes to finances. It almost seems like there was a hope by Republicans and their willing media lackeys that Jeff Davis was going to joyfully roll over on his ex-wife and give them a juicy story that they could use to shred her. Instead, he basically told them all to shove off.

The fear that Texas, and national, Republicans feel of Wendy Davis is palpable. With the Texas gubernatorial election fast approaching, Abbott and his cohorts can sense that Davis is just going to keep building on her growing popularity and possibly turn Texas blue. They will do anything they can to tear her down, make her seem disingenuous and fake. However, the more they go after her with sexist and specious attacks like this, the more it will backfire on them. The fact is, Wendy Davis isn’t going away anytime soon, and that scares the hell out of them.