Hutchison to Stay in the Senate

I was interested in the political implecations of Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison's decision to stay in her seat in the Senate, instead of resigning to fight full time for the GOP party nomination for governor. The blog In the Pink:Texas Monthly by Eileen Smith has a new post in which Ms. Smith humerously compares Sen. Hutchison to a school kid playing musical chairs that "totally cheats by kind of standing around his chair, guarding it, and sitting his ass down a little before the music stops." While this analogy creates a most humorous mental image, it is clear that there are some very real difference between journalism and blogging.

Determining Ms. Smith's audience is easy, she is definately writing for a liberal reader, and I would suspect a female liberal at that. It is also clear that Ms. Smith has little to no respect for Sen. Hutchison (or female conservatives in general) or her decision to stay in the Senate. It seems as if she is saying that the only reason that Sen. Hutchison would stay in the Senate is because she is losing confidence that she will win the Republican nomination, and doesn't want to be without a place in the Texas Republican Party. This is interesting because if you look for other news articles about the debated Senate seat, you will learn that there was a lot of pressure on Sen. Hutchison to stay in the Senate at least until after the November elections. If there had been a special election in November it is possible that Sen. Hutchenson would have been replaced by a Democrat, giving the Dems. the 60 seats that they would need for a filibuster. This of course would have been very bad news for the National Republican Party and I am sure that all blame would have been cast on Sen. Hutchison's decision to leave her seat.

There was nothing factually innaccurate about the In the Pink post. However, it was mostly opinion and I believe slightly misleading. There was no real evidence to support what Ms. Smith was saying, which is fine in this case because it was presented as her own opinion. I however disagree with her assessment. I would love to see a Democrat elected to the Senate for Texas, but I also know that the political game is played on many levels, and I would question that anyone as high up in the Party as Sen. Hutchison is was playing solely on her own accord.