Enter an arena where hot-headed idiots bluster their way through sensationalized battles for the sake of attention, where big egos duke it out on broadcast television, where America’s finest men and women wear ridiculous suits and claw at, sucker-punch, and pummel each other, emphasizing crowd reaction over true competition while complaining that what they do is, in fact, a real sport, where a motley assortment of has-beens, wannabes, and never-weres prowl on the sidelines, trying to make sense of the carnage with their “brilliant” “analysis” of “issues.”
Oh, and everyone’s really rich.
Linda McMahon has no experience in this arena. She just ran Monday Night Raw.
Sure, she has never served in office before, has a sketchy financial history, and has had her share of issues connecting with voters who can’t merely smother their problems underneath a titanic load of Benjamins.
But Linda McMahon knows what it takes to succeed in the Senate. After all, she ran the closest thing America’s got to Capitol Hill: World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc.
McMahon first burst into the ring as a Tea Party favorite in 2010, back when it was fashionable to spend lots of money explaining why the government shouldn’t spend lots of money. Two years after getting easily knocked out by her opponent, former Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, she’s back and better than ever with a creative and refreshing campaign strategy: Spend even more money!
In the ten minutes of Wikipedia research it took me to fill this column with bad wrestling jokes, Linda McMahon’s campaign will have spent roughly $4,000. In total, she’s spent over $77 million in the past two election cycles.
But Linda McMahon knows what she’s doing. She took a run-down, family-owned business and created a multibillion dollar empire. She’s not the perfect candidate,but she’s good enough.
And it helps that her opponent is even worse than she is.
Chris Murphy has been mud-wrestling in the House of Representatives for six years, and yet bills he’s written have been signed into law exactly zero times. For those keeping score at home, that’s a dead tie with Hulk Hogan and the late Randy “Macho Man” Savage. Murphy has been nothing more than a liberal flyweight, voting with his Democratic Party a whopping 93 percent of the time while receiving no major leadership roles in the House.
Now more than ever, America needs strong leadership and intelligent, independent thinkers on Capitol Hill. Chris Murphy is just a generic cheerleader for Team Democrat, chanting popular fight songs like “Raise Taxes, Raise Spending,” “Who Needs Oil Anyway?” and the crowd-pleasing “Republicans Hate Women!” He has no ideas and solutions other than what he’s memorized off the official Democratic platform.
When I approached him at a campaign rally to ask a basic question about his views on education during the apex of Connecticut’s school-reform debate, he dodged the question. When I asked him to clarify, he walked away.
Linda McMahon, for all of her issues, would not walk away. Linda McMahon is a fighter. She’s bold enough to buck her party’s views on social issues, voicing her support for gay rights and abortion. She’s slogged through the triumphs and trials of successfully building a unique business. She owes her fortune to the American spirit of innovation that rewarded her individuality and hard work. All she wants is to preserve that America for the builders, dreamers, and doers of our present and future.
And if she could handle The Undertaker and CM Punk, she’ll have no problem wiping the floor with the likes of Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse and Saxby Chambliss.
