Ashley Judd hands GOP ammo in quirky speech

Ashley Judd hands GOP ammo in quirky speech

Ashley Judd fueled chatter about a possible Senate bid â€" and gave Republicans fodder to use against her â€" with a quirky, informal speech on women’s health in Washington on Friday.

Speaking in a stream of consciousness style, the actress talked about her personal development as an activist and living as a “three time survivor of rape.”

Judd, 44, has been publicly flirting with a bid for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s seat representing her native state of Kentucky.

Her speech was peppered with a series of eccentric asides that raised some political pundits’ eyebrows.

“I have a dog that’s on hunger strike,” she said at one point. “He only wants cheese.”

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At one point, she apologized for missing part of an audience member’s question because, “I was giving my mother eye kisses.”

Republicans immediately seized on one comment she made during an anecdote about a bus trip that became the start of Bono's ONE campaign.

“We winter in Scotland,” she recalled initially telling the U2 singer when he invited her along. “We’re smart like that.”

“A true women of the people!” snarked Republican campaign strategist Brad Dayspring on Twitter.

Judd’s appearance at the George Washington University School of Public Health was part of a trip to Washington that appeared to signal her growing seriousness about launching a Senate campaign.

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Politico reported that she met with officials of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee this week. On Saturday, she is scheduled to receive a humanitarian award, also in Washington.

Wearing a short-sleeved flowered dress, Judd rattled off global poverty and mortality rates, praised Congress for expanding the Violence Against Women Act and described visiting slums and brothels around the world.

She admitted to dropping out of college to join the Peace Corps and then changing her mind and heading to “the other jungle, Hollywood.”

Judd talked in emotional terms, but without specifics, about her experience as a rape survivor, saying, “I cry so hard in hotel rooms that people next door are like, oh dearie me.”

She also touched on religion and the challenge of maintaining her faith, saying that working with suffering people can be “like a spiritual death.”

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“What I had to do was find a faith that would work for me under all causes and conditions,” she said.

Her mother Naomi Judd sat in the front row during her speech.

Karl Rove’s super PAC American Crossroads has already launched a pre-emptive strike on the “Missing” actress, slamming her as “an Obama-following, radical Hollywood liberal” in an ad.

Republicans have also been quick to note that Judd has made her primary home in Tennessee.

During her speech, Judd was sure to tout her Kentucky roots, noting that she has visited her ancestors’ hometowns throughout the eastern part of the state.

klee@nydailynews.com