Politically speaking, I’m not sure it gets much worse than this:
At a ceremony honoring veterans and senior citizens who sent presents to soldiers overseas, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut rose and spoke of an earlier time in his life.
“We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam,” Mr. Blumenthal said to the group gathered in Norwalk in March 2008. “And you exemplify it. Whatever we think about the war, whatever we call it – Afghanistan or Iraq – we owe our military men and women unconditional support.”
There was one problem: Mr. Blumenthal, a Democrat now running for the United States Senate, never served in Vietnam. He obtained at least five military deferments from 1965 to 1970 and took repeated steps that enabled him to avoid going to war, according to records. …
In 1970, with his last deferment in jeopardy, he enlisted in the Marine Reserve, landing a coveted spot in a unit in Washington, which virtually guaranteed that he would not be sent to Vietnam. The unit conducted part-time drills and other exercises and focused on local projects, like fixing a campground and organizing a Toys for Tots drive.
Wow. We need to draft Chris Murphy into this race immediately.
UPDATE: The Dem statewide convention is this weekend. Conceivably delegates could nominate someone other than Blumenthal. If someone else wants to get on the primary ballot via petition, they need to file 7,500 signatures by June 8th (PDF).
LATE UPDATE (5/21): Upon further reflection, it looks like we seriously jumped the gun here, thanks to what turned out to be a very misleading story by the New York Times. I’ve edited the headline to reflect this.
Richard Blumenthal is not ready for prime time. I could excuse him for his “lawsuits creates jobs” but not this. You see what the Republican smear machine did to John Kerry…and he actually served in Vietnam.
He’s probably not gonna win the primary, but if he does, Rob Simmons is a Vietnam vet
If you believe Rasmussen, Linda McMahon has been making up ground as of late anyway.
So stupid.
The article makes it sound like this has happened often, and the video is pretty clear. This follows him for the rest of the campaign, and opens up the “What else is he exaggerating?” line instantly. It could be a toss-up by July, if not sooner.
Forget Chris Murphy, I’d take Chris Dodd right now. He’s not a brilliant politician, but he knows better than to do something like this.
This sounds bad, but a good campaign can deal with it (see: Reverend Wright, Obama). Better it comes out now than during the general election.
On the other hand, I’m not very confident that Blumenthal can run a good campaign.
This is amazingly bad.
Anyone stupid enough to make that kind of mistake, will make many more before November. Get this dumb fuck into a candidate school ASAP, and start making an alternative list.
What a dick!
http://vimeo.com/5052034
What a joke. That is straight out of the old Eddie Murphy movie “The Distinguished Gentleman” where he’d pretend to have gone to Vietnam when he wanted to be “serious.”
Note to Richard Blumenthal. That movie is meant as a joke and not as a guide. Neither is the Martha Coakley campaign.
Chris Murphy. But the question remains: Is he interested in it?
This will cause the Democrats problems defending this seat. More millions blown in Connecticut defending a supposedly safe candidate that could be spent in Pennsylvania, Illinois, etc…
in the Senate.
it would have made for one hell of an October surprise.
Is it possible that he misspoke?
If he repeatedly claimed to have served in Vietnam, that would be a lot worse.
What a stupid way to destroy your career.
Even dumber than politicians’ chronic inability to sleep with their wives rather than other people, since at least that has some level of primal compulsion.
…. that gives us a world of time, given how the politcal bombshells have been coming at us left and right for the last few months!
In all seriousness, outside of being an idiot and everything else he’s been called here, he’s lost any moral authority to run for office. It’s one thing to potentially stretch and perhaps shade your military record (see Clinton, Bill; Bush, George W.; and Quayle, Dan), this is a flat out, bold-faced lie. Maybe it’s the type of lie he’s been telling so long that he actually started to believe it himself. No matter. The damage is done.
The one upshot is that if it is Linda McMahon he faces, my guess is that she’s got some pretty colorful stuff in her background as well!
If it’s Rob Simmons, winner of two Bronze Stars for, you know, actual service in Vietnam, imagine the political ads that could be ran.
Gulp.
We cant have any more tough open House seats for Republicans to come in and scoop up. Tell the DSCC to get its damn hands off of our House seats!!!
I fear the fallout from this will be so bad, no matter who we nominate we will now lose this seat.
Paging Chris Murphy, you are needed.
If Blumenthal doesn’t explain himself, there must be a new recruit ASAP.
Blumenthal probably has other demons yet to be exposed as per NYT.
He needs to be replaced immediately.
What kind of stupid way to go. Nobody freaking cares if you served in Vietnam…it wouldn’t have mattered in the general, at least not in CT.
How can anyone, Democrat or Republican, lie like this? Not only is he a blatant liar, he also insults the service of all the men and women who have actually put themselves on the front line for our country by lying. Shame on Mr. Blumenthal.
It seems to me that Joe Courtney’s seat is safer than Murphy’s. Also, Courney beat Simmons in a district that is probably more conservative than the state overall. Is he an option? Still, I’d be more than happy if CT Dems nominated Murphy.
Blumenthal has GOT to go. He’s toast.
Absolutely devastating. This guy’s political career is OVER!! Absolutely no way he can recover from this. You can argue a bribe, an affair but flat out lying when about being in a war is just not forgiveable. The pressure on him to step down will be like a ton of bricks and if he refuses and CT Dems go ahead and nominate him, they might as well be writing checks to the NRSC. The depth and timing of the article tells you they waited just at the right time to sink him and possibly save DEmocrats from an embarrasment of stupidity! Un-freaking-believable.
Rosa DeLauro if Murphy decides to pass? I remember reading something a very long time ago that she said she would be honored to run in Chris Dodd’s place if he so asked. Obviously, she older (67), but so is Mike Castle and he’s doing just fine. DeLauro has a very Democratic district that you guys wouldn’t have to worry about and is quite a popular figure here in New England.
And this may be just the glimmer of opportunity the GOP needs here, especially if Simmons escapes the primary (which I doubt will happen.)
apparently, according to the NYT, he has been known to be the former captain of the Harvard swim team… it’s just that he was never on it. Hopefully Dems will realize that Murphy and Courtney will be able to stay afloat this November, not Blumenthal.
was Rod Blagojevich scoffing
Linda McMahon has spent untold millions on her campaign. She definitely knows about Blumenthal lying about his military record. I bet she’s even found a bunch of Connecticut Republican Vietnam vets that are willing to act offended on TV. Imagine if she’d gotten to save this devastating, career-ending bombshell until Labor Day. At least now the Democrats can give Blumenthal the boot, get Chris Murphy or whoever to run, and salvage their Senate majority.
I had such high hopes for Blumenthal. Now he pissed it all away by being a bumbling idiot. He needs to retire ASAP.
Paging Chris Murphy! Paging Chris Murphy!
Let’s be grateful this broke now, rather than next Tuesday, the filing deadline, or the general for that matter.
the early favourite for this year’s George Allen Memorial Award.
http://www.theatlantic.com/pol…
Should be interesting to see what he says to get himself out of this.
Democratic attorney generals running for the senate are not doing so good this cycle. First Martha Coakley and the disaster at Massachusetts, now Dick Blumenthal, and probably Jack Conway losing in Kentucky tomorrow night.
Why would you even bring that up, Dick? Especially during this time?
Sure, its bad. If it came out in October. I doubt too many people will remember come November. However, I’m pessimistic, so, I could be wrong.
While Linda McMahon’s time with the WWE would look bad in the general election, she now looks like everyone’s carrying grandmother when standing next to Blumenthal. I wonder if Robert Menendez is getting any sleep.
Unless there is one hell of an explanation Blumenthal is toast. If I lived in Connecticut and he was the Dem nominee I couldn’t vote for him. I wouldn’t vote republican but I would either skip the race or vote 3rd party (who is the Liebermann for Connecticut party running?).
I feel like the ghost of Martha Coakley’s Senate campaign has possessed Dick Blumenthal. This looks really bad right now, but I think the CT Dems need to wait a few days to see how this story affects his numbers before they start pushing him to the exits.
I know it seems like he’s digging in right now, but if his numbers start to plummet and the establishment wants him out, I think he’ll get out. Nevertheless, something tells me that this is not going to end well.
…that the McMahon campaign is taking credit for this article. They provided the oppo research piece to the Times. Reading the article, it seems that McMahon wrote the darn thing given the way it sounded like a propaganda piece.
But, you guys are falling fr it hook line and sinker…
Let’s see how Blumenthal responds. The AP has a good rebuttal out, BTW, defending Blumenthal.
Seriously, folks… this is a campaign piece and it is full of holes, but everyone is assuming that every allegation is true. It’s no different than the folks who wanted to believe Death Panels. Let’s at least let the defense have a say before we condemn the man and execute his career.
They sure like whacking Dems. After the first one on Blumenthal, I guess they smelt blood in the water and decided to go in for the kill. I don’t see how he can bail at this point. You can’t have Dodd and Blumenthal blow up and expect to hang on to this seat with a 3rd candidate. That’s wishful thinking.
How depressing.
Murphy better, omg I’d even be happy for Dodd to get back in.
Read this article:
http://trueslant.com/level/201…
Why not get Lamont or Malloy instead?
Panic panic panic!
All he has to do is say it was a slip of the tongue. Six months from now we’ll find it might have cost him 10 points in the final results maybe.
That means he’ll still win by 20.
Seemed to be brightening somewhat this happens. Dems are exacerbating their problems just as the GOP did during 2008. Remember the self-destruction threads? Urgh.
can honestly say that as someone in a military family this man sickens me. He MUST be replaced immediately, I will probably root for the Republican (not vocally on this site) if he is the nominee.
Blumenthal is a well-known commodity in the state. It’s not like he’s some novice, unknown candidate. If he gives a decent accounting of himself today, he should be able to ride this thing out.
I am in no way condoning Blumenthal’s dishonesty about his alleged service in Vietnam–let me say that off the top. But you had to live through the sixties and seventies to really understand what a deeply unpopular war Vietnam was. I served for four and a half years in the Army in the sixties, including a tour in Korea–I had a wife and two little boys and considered myself fortunate to not have to go to Vietnam. I had three cousins who did serve in Vietnam, one died there. But thousands and thousands of guys during that period were doing everything they could–wangling deferments, relocating (many permanently) to Canada–because they were deeply and passionately opposed to America’s commitment to a stupid and impossible-to-win conflict in Southeast Asia. These were not cowards; they were for the most part highly principled people. Someone once said that war is too often a game where old men send young men to die for no good reason, and Vietnam epitomized that concept. Deep in my heart, I cannot blame Blumenthal for not wanting to serve in Vietnam, but he definitely should have been open and honest about his past and his reasons.
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com…
I’m surprised no one’s commenting on the full video, or the reporter who says he never misrepresented his service in 20 years, or the recent debate in which he made it clear he didn’t serve in Vietnam, or the statements on his website and the many pieces of campaign literature that clearly describe his service accurately. The more that emerges, the thinner this whole thing appears. Saying he lied about his service appears totally unsupportable when the whole record is examined. Maybe some folks will start being a little less ready to jump to conclusions (yeah, right!).