I grew up in Connecticut, at a time when the phrase "Moderate Republican" was not an oxymoron, let alone an endangered species. Pro wrestling czar Linda McMahon is trying (again) to convince voters she's cut from the same jib as the late Lowell Weicker. But as with Scott Brown's attempt to look moderate, it falls to the ground when you listen to her words. Go past the socialist tangerine beignet for more.
TPM strikes again with an article about McMahon's sit-down with the editorial board of the Hartford Courant -- a newspaper whose endorsement means a hell of a lot in my former home state:
At an editorial board meeting with the Hartford Courant Friday, McMahon said she opposed requiring religious hospitals to dispense emergency contraception to rape victims, which has been state law in Connecticut since 2007.
“I don’t think that the government should overreach,” McMahon said when asked if a Catholic-run hospital should be required to provide emergency contraception access to a rape victim who arrives “in the middle of the night.”
“I mean it’s a separation of church and state in my view, and I think that a religious institution has the right to decide what its policies would be in that, in that case,” she said.
TPM has video of the situation, but they're also nice enough to excerpt the questions that generated the answers, so I'm afraid McMahon can't whine about being taken out of context (or, as the late great Captain Lou Albano used to say when Linda's husband Vince used to accuse Albano of cheating to win a match, "Nahh, that's just camera angles!"):
Courant: So a rape victim, in a hospital. And it’s a hospital that is run by a Catholic institution. Emergency contraception, should that be—should she be sent to another hospital in the middle of the night when she’s in dire distress?
McMahon: I don’t think that the government should overreach. I mean it’s a separation of church and state in my view, and I think that a religious institution has the right to decide what its policies would be in that, in that case.
Courant: Yeah and I respect that, I just wonder if that institution, gets a certain, a majority of it’s money from the government, if it’s mostly federally funded, does that play a role in your thinking?
McMahon: Well I just think again, that it is an issue of separation of church and state, and that institution should decide what its role would be, and what it’s comfortable with doing in that instance.
Before he starred in remakes of Disney films, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's catch phrase was "Can you smell what the Rock is cooking?!" Unless I miss my guess, that's the smell of McMahon's senatorial campaign cooking... and with any luck, CT voters who remember what a
real moderate Republican looks like will make sure that sucker's just about done. If you're not from Connecticut (or even if you are), and you'd like to help the process along, you can
donate to Chris Murphy's campaign here.