Thursday, August 12, 2010

Memo to Linda McMahon: Don't Run From The WWE, Embrace it !!

With former WWE CEO Linda McMahon now the formal Republican nominee for Senate, the Connecticut Democrats are blasting away with the only weapon they have in their arsenal: An elitist's disdain for the world of "professional" wrestling:

It took less than an hour after Linda McMahon’s triumph in the Connecticut Republican primary election for Senate Tuesday night for Democrats to throw her past as a pro wrestling CEO in her face, in a volley of attacks that is unlikely to cease until election day in November.

“Today the party of Bob Dole, Jack Kemp and Richard Lugar nominated a candidate who kicks men in the crotch, thinks of scenes of necrophilia as ‘entertainment,’ and runs an operation where women are forced to bark like dogs. This is what has become of the once grand old party,” said Hari Sevugan, national press secretary for the Democratic National Committee
.

Usually personal attacks are saved for the final third of a campaign, when the down-in-the-polls candidate realized they cannot win based on the merits of their arguments (see Corzine, Jon). The fact that this is what the Connecticut Democratic establishment is leading with signals they are working with very ammunition at the very start of what will be a long, protracted battle.

How should McMahon respond? Let's break it down:

-She should not respond to the WWE taunts. At all. She should fire back at opponent Richard Blumenthal by tying him to the Democratic establishment and Barack Obama (hey, if it worked in Massachusetts...), and remind voters in Connecticut that he represents a continuation of the polices that are enraging them in the first place. Let the Democrats talk about sweaty, oily Mexicans in masks, Linda can talk economics.

-Should she feel the need to respond, she should not do it by degenerating the very business that made her and her husband so wealthy.


Wrestling is a type of NASCAR to the liberal elites: something they don't watch, something they don't understand, and something they would rather see replaced by chamber music and museum exhibits. But professional wrestling has been around and beloved by Americans for over a century, enough for the WWE to hold sold-out shows nightly across America (making them, on an annual basis, the largest grossing "entertainment tour" in the world). Their pay-per-views, especially Wrestlemania, are usually the most-purchased events of the television season. And with a WWE product on cable/free TV four nights out of seven - TV being the ultimate democracy; if people don't watch you, you're gone - all the evidence points to a NASCAR-like following completely under the radar of the Leftist elite.


Go ahead, let the Democrats mock wrestling, the way they mock NASCAR fans. How well has that worked out for the party? And again, do not distance yourself too far or degenerate your product, Linda - otherwise you will alienate fans who are going to vote for you simply based upon your last name...

-Finally, if Al Franken, an untalented, uncouth, unkempt, rude "entertainer" could win a Senate election without abandoning what made him famous, why can't Linda do the same? If Ronald Regan could become the greatest president in my lifetime without turning his back on his monkey co-stars in the "Bonzo" film series, why should Linda have to disown Rey Mysterio?

Embrace your life, Linda McMahon, along with all the jobs you have created with it, and all the joy and laughter you have brought to people. You cannot run from the WWE.

So run with it, instead....

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