Linda McMahon Doorhanger: Vote For Obama … And Me

[|Montana Bengal|]

[url="http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/11/linda-mcmahon-vote-for-obama.php"]http://2012.talkingp...e-for-obama.php[/url]
[color=#000000][size=3][b][url="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/evan_mcmorris-santoro.php"]EVAN MCMORRIS-SANTORO[/url][/b] [/size][/color] [color=#000000][size=3]NOVEMBER 4, 2012[/size][/color]
[color=#000000][font=Georgia,][size=4][quote]Co[size=4]nnecticut Republican Senate nominee Linda McMahon has been telling voters lately that it’s okay to vote for President Obama as well as her. Now she’s taking it a step further — and getting about as far away from her own party’s nominee for president as she can — and actually [/size][i]urging[/i][size=4] voters to cast their ballots for Obama as well as in the final days of the campaign.[/size][/size][/font][/color]

[color=#000000][font=Georgia,][size=4]McMahon campaign doorhangers that Democrats say they’ve discovered in minority neighborhoods this weekend couldn’t make it more clear: “Vote Barack Obama For President and Vote Linda McMahon For Senate,” they read. It’s a surprising suggestion from a Republican who, along with her husband, has given [url="http://www.ctpost.com/news/article/McMahons-give-150K-to-pro-Romney-Super-PAC-3858003.php"]$150,000[/url] to help make Romney the next president of the United States.[/size][/font][/color]
[color=#000000][font=Georgia,][size=4]The McMahon campaign says she’s still backing Romney.[/size][/font][/color]
[/quote]

Edit: I had the picture linked, but it doesn't look like it is showing up.

[Homer_Rice]

Buddy of mine who is the managing editor of the paper at which I used to work has been going after McMahon pretty hard these past months. This was embargoed until today:

[quote]As for Connecticut's U.S. Senate election, the Republican, wrestling zillionaire and former pornographer Linda McMahon, running a second time but still knowing nothing about public policy, has again tried to buy her way out of the ordinary vetting of the democratic process, avoiding questioning and hiding behind another $50 million barrage of commercials and mailings, most contriving attacks on the Democratic nominee, U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy. These attacks have become wildly confusing and implausible overkill.

McMahon's campaign is full of grotesque ironies, contradictions, and distortions, but she cannot be called hypocritical because she has no political record and doesn't believe in anything.

Murphy is, as McMahon sneers, a "career politician," which would not be bad if he was ever capable of original thought. Maybe the most that can be said for him is that he knows issues and submits to questioning. His luck is that as long as McMahon is around pursuing her vanity the bar in Connecticut can never be set lower.[/quote]

One of the laments my friend has about all this is that the Republican Party in CT has gone way downhill. And he is a Republican of reasonable stature in the state.

[Jamie_B]

The Republican party has gone down hill overall, which is sad because we need two sane parties to work through our issues, sadly we dont have that.

[Homer_Rice]

To speak to the point that Montana raised: Connecticut is a mostly Democratic state. It had a stable Republican party which provided necessary checks to the Dems. And it was a classic "eastern establishment" party in terms of political views and culture. Now I moved away in the mid-90s so I can't offer any on-the-ground observations, but I suspect that the establishment character of the Republican party has been under challenge by first, the Reagan revolution in the party and now by the even more radical tea party-ish factions. I witnessed some of the impact of Reaganism in CT but am only guessing at the latter.

So, in a strange way, McMahon is trying to be both local and national in her politics. Historically, Republicans have had to capture Democratic votes in order to win office. Lowell Weicker (ex-governor) drove a wedge into things, too when he ran as an independent though he was really a maverick Republican. This strangeness also partly explains Joe Lieberman, who has kind of gone in the other direction--he's a conservative Democrat who has had to peel off Republican votes because he is not considered Democratic enough by some folks up there.

[Vol_Bengal]

[quote]former pornographer Linda McMahon[/quote]

Really? Is that true? I hadn't ever seen or heard anything about that. I knew her and Vince did the WWE thing but I never took her as being formerly of pornography.

[Homer_Rice]

[quote name='Vol_Bengal' timestamp='1352119923' post='1177762']
Really? Is that true? I hadn't ever seen or heard anything about that. I knew her and Vince did the WWE thing but I never took her as being formerly of pornography.
[/quote]

Here's the backstory.

During the primaries last spring, my buddy wrote an editorial describing McMahon's wealth as "derived from the business of violence, pornography, and general raunch." He was referring to the wrestling stuff. Subsequently, an exec from WWE threatened a libel lawsuit for this characterization. Not a good idea as my pal (a) runs a top-notch news org and (-b-) is not easily intimidated.

Antes got upped. As far as I know, no actual lawsuit was filed. But the die was cast, so to speak, and I've seen this characterization repeated a number of times in the past months.

I have more info available, but I'd have to dig through my email to find all the citations. Here are some excerpts from the main column.

[quote]The threat came in a letter written by World Wrestling Entertainment Vice President Brian Flinn and sent to news organizations throughout the state as well as to the JI.

"This is now at least the second time you have made false statements that damage our corporate reputation, and the second time you have stated that WWE is involved in pornography," Flinn wrote to Powell. "WWE programming, like Hollywood movies and Broadway shows, is an exciting blend of action, characters, and fictional storylines of good versus evil entertaining millions every week."

Flinn demanded a retraction from the JI by June 4, or else "we will seek legal and all available remedies."

Powell's column did not mention WWE, which is based in Stamford. But answering Flinn by email the editor asked if WWE wanted the letter published in the newspaper and if lawsuit depositions -- preparatory interrogations of witnesses -- could be undertaken before the Republican Senate primary Aug. 14, adding that he was eager to meet "Trish," the shapely actress featured in an infamous WWE program in which McMahon's husband, Vince, instructs her to undress down to her bra and panties, kneel in the wrestling ring, and bark like a dog in front of an audience of thousands. She complies.

Flinn did not immediately reply.

The McMahon campaign this week responded angrily to similar criticism from a candidate in the Democratic primary for senator, former Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, who said, "I'll be damned if I let someone who sells sex and violence and pornography for a living be our next U.S. senator." Bysiewicz, the McMahon campaign said, was being "dishonest and disingenuous" because, as secretary, she had participated in WWE's voter registration campaigns. But the McMahon campaign did not threaten Bysiewicz with a libel lawsuit.

Linda McMahon, who won the Republican nomination for senator two years ago but ran next to last on her party's state ticket and was badly defeated by Democrat Richard Blumenthal, has acknowledged that WWE's programming once was much more provocative than it is now. The Internet video site YouTube carries many excerpts from WWE programs showing women undressed and in sexual positions. The programs were issues in the Senate election two years ago and, by distributing its libel lawsuit threat throughout Connecticut's news media, the McMahon campaign aims to prevent them from being mentioned this year.

McMahon is being challenged in the Republican primary by former U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays.
[/quote]

[|BlackJesus|]

[b]A Republican politician's job is easy and pretty clear: you bash 'welfare queens' and 'free-riders', tell tearful stories of fetuses composing operas in the womb, and promise to bomb America's brown-skinned enemies back to the Stone Age.

A Democratic politician's job is hard: you have to actually govern, and do so with the aforementioned fucktards.[/b]

[Vol_Bengal]

[quote name='BlackJesus' timestamp='1352142848' post='1177851']
[b]A Republican politician's job is easy and pretty clear: you bash 'welfare queens' and 'free-riders', tell tearful stories of fetuses composing operas in the womb, and promise to bomb America's brown-skinned enemies back to the Stone Age.

A Democratic politician's job is hard: you have to actually govern, and do so with the aforementioned fucktards.[/b]
[/quote]

BJ you're better than this...

There is another poster of recent acclaim that is approaching this simplistic and inane blather and I don't equate your and his work. But this puts me in mind of it.