Connecticut and the death knell of the GOP moderate

Two years ago, the political career of former congressman Rob Simmons devolved into an odd saga. Drowned by millions of dollars of McMahon’s wrestling fortune, Simmons lost the party’s endorsement and dropped out, only to return later and suggest he might still be a candidate against McMahon in the primary. Kind of. …

Shays was a longtime survivor in a top-targeted blue-leaning Connecticut House district who eventually succumbed in 2008 to a Democratic wave. After picking up the pieces from a scandal in which his campaign manager embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars, Shays attempted what Simmons failed at, joining a 2012 race in which McMahon (who lost in the 2010 general election to now-Sen. Richard Blumenthal) was again primed to spend tens of millions of dollars. …

As the polls have drifted more and more towards McMahon, Shays’s campaign has devolved into a series of “look-at-me” campaign gimmicks generally reserved for small-time candidates who have nothing else to get them noticed.