Simmons Makes His Play

I’ve been watching to see the reaction of Richard Blumenthal’s two leading Republican opponents to his Vietnam/fibbing scandal. My general rule of thumb in these situations is that you can infer the opponents’ reads from their initial response. If they think the person being hit by the scandal is crippled or going to go down the drain on their own, they’ll generally hold back. If they think it’s damaging but not crippling, they’ll hit hard. (For a classic illustration of this, look at the day one and week one GOP reactions to the Lewinsky scandal.) And Rob Simmons is coming down clearly in the latter category, unleashing a harsh “Blumenthal Lied About Vietnam” ad now running and trying to raise money around the interwebs.