Manchin knew the climate of West Virginia is strongly pro-gun and it would be suicide to say anything about regulating guns, so he lied through his teeth and the NRA fools bought it. Another example of Lucy with the football.
Running "moderate" Capito against "moderate" Manchin would have been an even bigger problem though. She's pro-abortion (or at least, middle of the road on the issue) and he's ran with a "A" rating from pro-life groups (probably lied about that too -- Harry Reid & Bob Casey Jr. redux) so Manchin would have also certainly tried to run to the right of her on abortion and gotten the pro-life groups to endorse him over her. If it were Connecticut, it wouldn't matter much, but one of the reasons West Virginia has moved so strongly to the right in the last 12 years is because of social issues (Gore got killed by "values voters"), so the Christian right choosing Manchin over Capito (especially all the church organizations don't mind if he's a socialist as long as he's pro-life and pro-traditional marriage) would have probably been fatal to her campaign.
There were quite a few West VA freepers talking up Manchin when he was Governor and gushing about what a wonderful "conservative" RAT he was. It reminds me of the freepers who were "disappointed" when "conservative" RAT Sam Nunn stumped for Obama on the campaign in 2008 and was on the short list for Vice President. They said they "lost a lot of respect for Nunn". Fortunately, I couldn't lose any since I didn't have any respect for him to begin with.
The worst offenders were the freepers who gloated about helping to re-elect Al Gore's partner-in-crime Joe LIEbermann though. (He's been really on the forefront f this latest "ban guns" crusade, along with Feinswine) Unlike Nunn and Manchin, LIEberman had overwhelmingly leftist record on EVERY issue besides Israel and made no bones about it. We lost George Allen, Jim Talent, and Conrad Burns by less than 1% in that same election cycle, while some "conservatives" were focused on re-electing the commie from Connecticut. Personally I hope he screwed them over good. They deserve it for screwing over the rest of us and getting in bed with the guy because the war on terror was supposedly "the most important issue". Hopefully it will be a wakeup call for them.
“the Christian right choosing Manchin over Capito (especially all the church organizations don’t mind if he’s a socialist as long as he’s pro-life and pro-traditional marriage) would have probably been fatal to her campaign.”
BTW, Manchin’s treason is great news for Capito, since when some good-ol’-boy Democrat replaces Rockefeller as the RAT Senate nominee and claims to be “pro-life and pro-gun” she’ll be able to say “that’s exactly what Manchin said a couple of years ago, and he immediately started voting like the Democrat that he is.”