Linda McMahon’s spokesman, Ed Patru, identifies “unmistakable signs of desperation and even paranoia . . . among Dick Blumenthal and the Democratic machine” in this morning’s e-mail to the press. Democrats are paranoid, he says, because they’re on the ropes — a bold claim, considering the Republican candidate trails by double digits in most recent polls.

McMahon’s campaign is circulating video of Blumenthal’s ponderous answer to her question in last Monday’s debate, “How do you create a job?”

To parry McMahon’s thrust, Blumenthal is hitting McMahon on her pledge to cut 10 percent of non-defense, discretionary spending. Yesterday, McMahon used the less-than-felicitous phrase “across the board” to describe her approach to budget-cutting on ABC’s This Week with Christiane Amanpour:

The reason I’ve not been specific as to [cuts to] particular programs – and I’ve dealt with it in terms of rolling back non-defense discretionary spending to 2008 levels – because that was an approach that I took as a CEO. You look at, OK, how are you going to cut costs and cut expenses? You can look at a 10 percent cut across the board.

Last night, subscribers received an e-mail from Phyllis Glassman of “Seniors for Blumenthal,” in which Glassman sighted a ray of cuts to Social Security in McMahon’s foggy quotation:

As someone who counts on Social Security, I can tell you that a 10 percent cut would be devastating. It would mean a cut of $1400 in Social Security for seniors like me.

Today, Patru responds:

Never mind the fact that Linda’s reference to a “10 percent cut across the board” was clearly in reference to WWE; never mind also the fact that Linda made it clear she was talking about rolling back “non-defense discretionary spending,” which obviously doesn’t include Social Security and Medicaid.
Dick Blumenthal’s campaign is in 100% panic mode and it is gripped with paranoia, as evidenced by its growing reliance on deceptive, misleading and patently false attacks. Why? Because on the No. 1 issue facing the country – job creation – Dick Blumenthal just doesn’t get it. None of this is lost on the voters of Connecticut.

Or so he hopes.