Pat Mullins Undermines GOP

Pat Mullins just made a serious misstep that undermines the ongoing efforts of the Republican Party to defeat both Boucher and Perriello in the fall. And it also brings up additional questions about how serious the campaign against Glenn Nye is. The Republican Party of Virginia launched two new web ads asking if Boucher and Perriello were in attendance when the President of Mexico launched an attack on our 2nd Amendment rights. Great idea, except that both Boucher and Perriello have a pretty solid pro-gun record. Boucher has been endorsed by the NRA. So it's no surprise that the "gotcha" failed.

"I did not attend the speech," Rep. Boucher told The Ticket. "I oppose gun control. And my opposition to gun control has resulted in the National Rifle Assn. endorsing my reelection."

Not only that, adds Boucher spokeswoman Courtney Lamie, he's earned an A+ rating from the NRA.

Oh come on! Then something had to be up with that Perriello guy, right? He wasn't there but surely he was doing something anti-2nd Amendment during the speech. Maybe he was participating in one of those wussy turn-in-the-gun programs. The Virginia GOP could at least bat .500!

Perriello's press secretary, Jessica Barba, laughed when we told her about the ad mentioning that her boss was meeting with constituents during Calderon's speech.

"Shockingly, the ad was not well-researched," she told The Ticket. Barba included a letter to President Obama signed by her boss stating his opposition to Atty. Gen.l Eric Holder's "plan to reinstate the assault weapon ban."

"To even consider reinstating an "assault weapon" ban is an affront to our Founding Fathers, who so clearly understood the importance of the ordinary citizens' right to keep and bear arms," reads the letter.

The serious question isn't why Mullins gave the go ahead of an attack that would so clearly backfire. It's why he ignored Glenn Nye. Is the 2nd District some type of hot bed of gun control activities? Or is the GOP just not serious about taking out Glenn Nye? I've said before that the easy treatment of Nye could foreshadow a potential party switch in the future. This misstep by Mullins keeps the possibility on the table.