Senate Smackdown!

Apparently Linda McMahon (wife of current WWE CEO Vince McMahon, and former CEO herself) has decided to try and get into the US Senate.

Aside from why she'd want the job (the House always seemed like much more fun), the big question is here is how anyone could look at the two current Connecticut Senators and conclude that Dodd is the problem. Apparently McMahon has given money to the Democrats in the past, so people are concerned she isn't Republican enough, but deciding Lieberman is worthy of keeping so much as the capacity for speech should be proof enough (though admittedly McMahon would have to wait another two years to take him on).

Ever since Al Franken was voted in as the Junior Senator of Minnesota (or at least since he was sworn in, after Coleman's wretched, hypocritical and shameless campaign of whining douchebaggery finally received sufficient legal bitch-slappings to force it to stop), Democrats need to be careful about mocking celebrities running for political office (I'd question if McMahon qualifies as a celebrity, but the whole "Can you smell what Barack is cooking?" episode during the Presidential Campaign at least suggests an awful lot of people pay attention to these people), but at least Franken had proven his understanding of the American political system. It will be interesting to see if McMahon can manage that feat also, or indeed whether anyone's actually going to bother to ask her to. I mean, she's already demonstrated an interest in bipartisanship (again, only because political commentators in the States are crazy enough to think that being nice to Joe Lieberman makes a Republican bipartisan, as oppose to just rewarding a turncoat for their treachery [1]) and fiscal conservatism [2], which in the world of George Will, David Broder et al, automatically makes you qualified for public office.

[1] I may sound hysterical over Lieberman, but the thing you have to remember about Lieberman is that I really hate him. The one and only time I ever spoke to Menzies Campbell, it quickly became an (entirely genial) argument over whether or not Lieberman deserved to be beaten with sticks.

[2] Magically, this always translates into "Everything must pay for itself except tax cuts for the rich and shooting foreigners" when people take office. Then everyone pretends not to notice, which is why the Blue Dogs still get to pretend they have a philosophy, rather than coin slots in their spines labelled "Insert $100 000 to shaft the poor".