Texas Conservatives and members of Texas Tea Party groups are in an uproar over Kay Bailey’s record:
- She’s pro-choice (and even a former member of a PAC that raised money for pro-choice female Republican Senate candidates)
- She voted for the “terrorist bill of rights” in 2005 (siding with Democrats against President Bush by supporting legislation that limited military interrogation options against captured terrorists)
- She voted to expand stem cell research in 2006 (siding with Democrats against President Bush again by supporting the inclusion of stem cells taken from aborted fetuses)
- She disregarded a Republican filibuster effort against a defense bill in December 2009 (joining Democrats to force a vote on the bill and to clear the way for work to resume on health care)
Clearly, she is the evil enemy of conservatives, the embodiment of all things bipartisan and the bane of their existence. In other words, she is John McCain in a dress… and pearls. Interestingly, not everyone feels that Kay Bailey is such a moderate. In fact, the nonpartisan National Journal gave her an 80% conservative rating in 2008, very similar to that of her well-known conservative colleague Senator John Cornyn who scored 83%. Either way, she trails Rick Perry in the Republican gubernatorial primary race and has raised ire on all sides. Thus, she clearly ranks high on my “pearls of peril” scale. I predict that she will get much use out of her signature red power suit and amazing Texas-sized pearl necklace as the fight culminates with the March 2 primary. But let me hear from you – Kay Bailey: a true conservative, a neutered Republican or a Democrat in disguise?