Politics 101: define your opponent before he can define himself.
Linda McMahon is following the syllabus.
After a week of winning the news cycle against Chris Murphy thanks to opposition research that the congressman was threatened with foreclosure, McMahon is overtly trying to tie Murphy to fellow Democrat and former Sen. Chris Dodd.
In a news release this morning, McMahon labels Murphy “Chris Dodd 2.0,” harkening back to the Countrywide VIP loan scandal.
A House oversight committee found this summer after a three-year investigation that the failed mortgage giant hooked scores of lawmakers up with discount loans to curry favor, including Dodd.
Dodd retired at the end of 2010 rather than run for re-election to the Senate against none other than McMahon, who assailed the incumbent over the loan controversy before he called it a day.
Now McMahon is trying to lump Murphy in with Dodd.
“It seems Congressman Murphy certainly learned a thing or two from his mentor Chris Dodd about using your official position to your advantage,” McMahon campaign manager Corry Bliss said in the release. “But the student could soon become the teacher. If Connecticut voters keep electing Congressman Murphy to federal office, he could end up teaching Chris Dodd a few things about how to game the system.”
UPDATE
The Murphy campaign dismissed the comparison, saying McMahon is back to her deceitful attacks from her previous failed bid for Senate.
“Linda McMahon spent millions trumping up false lies about Dick Blumenthal and now she’s doing the same thing against Chris Murphy,” Murphy spokesman Ben Marter said.
“McMahon’s desperate attacks have been discredited by financial experts and newspapers around the state again and again. The Hartford Courant said that ‘there is no evidence’ to McMahon’s charges and the Connecticut Post reported that financial experts say that the ‘evidence does not support her allegations.'”
McMahon has even gone so far to highlight that Murphy was once an intern for Dodd.