Stefanowski’s contortion on abortion. When misspeaking becomes a revelation.

Poor Bob Stefanowski. He can’t help it. He’s been busy working the Saudis for $36 million and paying little attention to seismic changes in the American political landscape. The Madison Republican dropped a clanger Thursday when he announced during an interview that he supports a woman’s access to abortion in the first trimester. That is a new stand on abortion rights from Stefanowski 12 days before Election Day and five years since he first began running for governor.

Stefanowski appeared not to have understood the magnitude of his blunder until Friday morning or needed more than 12 hours of head scratching to compose a risible explanation. Try to imagine how many versions of hummima-hummina-hummina he produced until he settled on his preposterous statement.

Stefanowski said he misspoke. He will support no changes in Connecticut’s long-settled abortion law. It is possible that Stefanowski believes that is Connecticut law and he was endorsing it in different language than he has previously used. Or the former payday executive has never been fluent in the law of the reproductive rights in Connecticut.

The second-time Republican nominee for governor made his explanation worse by trying to turn ignorance into a virtue. Stefanowski used the statement to highlight his considerable self-regard by declaring himself virtuous because he admits an “innocent mistake,” unlike, he writes, Governor Ned Lamont. Now Stefanowski would now like to move on, as would anyone who has blown a hole below the waterline of his self-financed $10 million campaign. But Stefanowski could not leave it at that.

Robert of Arabia used the conclusion of his statement to repudiate the tone he struck a few paragraphs before. Stefanowski blames Democrat Lamont for the attention paid to the former loan shark’s confusion on the state of reproductive law. Stefanowski says the abortion fiasco is a diversion from Lamont’s support the police accountability bill that the Republican has been highlighting in the frantic final days of the campaign. Just don’t ask him to explain it.

Published October 28, 2022.