Bevin: Lundergan Grimes campaign ‘keeps her silent’ on issues

Matt Bevin, the conservative challenger to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), suggested Democratic candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes’s campaign is “keep[ing] her silent” on issues because “she really has no idea what she’s talking about.”

{mosads}“She truly seems like a wonderful person, but she’s really unequipped to be a U.S. senator. She doesn’t have the life experience, the knowledge of issues, the understanding, the experience on anything to qualify her to be in this role,” he told The Hill in a Wednesday interview.

Bevin said he had met her on the trail and found her to be a nice person, but that he agreed with Republican attacks on the likely Democratic nominee, that her refusal to weigh in on a number of hot-button issues is a problem.

He said that the “only way” Republicans will hold McConnell’s seat is if he becomes the nominee, because he negates all of her advantages against him, which he said are that “She’s young, she’s new, she’s a woman, and she’s not Mitch McConnell.”

The Republican Party of Kentucky launched a social media campaign earlier this week to publicize what it says is Lundergan Grimes’s silence on a number of issues important to Kentuckians, like Senate Democrats’ decision to unilaterally gut the minority party’s ability to filibuster most executive branch nominations.

Bevin said he believes her campaign “keep[s] her silent” because she isn’t familiar with the issues she’s asked about.

“I think her challenge is indicative of the fact that the few times she has spoken it really hasn’t gone well. It becomes evident that she really has no idea what she’s talking about, and that’s why they keep her silent,” he said.

In September, National Republican Senatorial Committee Communications Director Brad Dayspring also knocked Lundergan Grimes for her silence on the campaign trail, calling her an “empty dress” in comments that drew fire from Democrats, who saw his characterization of the candidate as sexist.

“Alison Lundergan Grimes seems incapable of articulating her own thoughts, and faced with questions, either directly parrots the talking points handed to her by [Sen.] Chuck Schumer or she babbles incoherently and stares blankly into the camera as though she’s a freshman in high school struggling to remember the CliffsNotes after forgetting to read her homework assignment,” Dayspring told The Hill in September.