{"id":660364,"date":"2010-02-11T10:32:00","date_gmt":"2010-02-11T15:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:blogs.courant.com,2010:\/capitol_watch\/\/9.71452"},"modified":"2010-02-14T12:59:30","modified_gmt":"2010-02-14T17:59:30","slug":"the-china-syndrome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/660364","title":{"rendered":"The China Syndrome"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Linda McMahon likes to trumpet the company’s multi-national connections. For instance, under her direction, the WWE opened an office in Shanghai, a fact she proudly pointed out at a Republican party event in Vernon last weekend.<\/p>\n

Rob Simmons, McMahon’s GOP rival, immediately saw an opportunity to one-up her. He didn’t just open an office in China, he said, he spent the time there as a CIA agent. And, as if to to prove his superiority on all things Chinese, he quickly tossed off a few sentences in Mandarin.<\/p>\n

The Simmons camp released a video of the two candidates’ edited comments, which you can see here<\/a>.<\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
Other critics quickly piled on, citing the comment as evidence of McMahon’s lack of foreign policy experience. A blogger at Connecticut Political Reporter <\/a>invoked Sarah Palin’s<\/span> Tina Fey’s famous “I can see Russia from my house” remark.<\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
Contrary the implication of an earlier post, McMahon’s campaign says she wasn’t trying to brandish her foreign policy credentials when she mentioned the Shanghai office — she was simply citing her international business experience.<\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
“Fluency in Chinese is not a top issue in the state of Connecticut,” McMahon spokesman Ed Patru said, “Job creation and economic growth are. In six years in Washington, Rob Simmons supported job-killing measures like cap and trade and card check. Perhaps there’s a province in China that could use a job-killing public official like Rob.”<\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n
 <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Linda McMahon likes to trumpet the company’s multi-national connections. For instance, under her direction, the WWE opened an office in Shanghai, a fact she proudly pointed out at a Republican party event in Vernon last weekend. Rob Simmons, McMahon’s GOP rival, immediately saw an opportunity to one-up her. He didn’t just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2521,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-660364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-2LN2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2521"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660364\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}