Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) Doesn't Want To Be Teabagged-- Announces Retirement

Kay Bailey Hutchison is a down-the-line mainstream Texas conservative. Her ProgressivePunch lifetime score on crucial votes is 4.23, exactly tied with Oklahoma reactionary Tom Coburn. Her record is further right than GOP Establishment vice presidential top choice John Thune (R-SC), further right than John McCain's (11.46), Richard Shelby's (6.31) and John Ensign's (5.30), among others. She scores perfect zeros on issue after issue important to delusional teabaggers-- from education, the anti-UN mania that has swept the GOP again and gun-nuttery to the unfair tax policies favoring the wealthy that the Republicans and teatards love and beating up on public employees and their unions. She has a record any reactionary imbecile should love. But this morning, despite a 58% approval rating among Texas Republicans, she announced that she's not running for reelection. On her Facebook page she wrote that "the last two years have been particularly difficult, especially for my family," referring to the knee-jerk teabagger attacks against her.

Having lost a horribly divisive primary against teabagger secessionist (and ex-Democrat) Rick Perry, she had every reason to believe that she could be the next William Bennett (R-UT), who was deposed by his own state's radicals for not being "conservative" enough, even though he's extremely conservative. Having watched Lisa Murkowski lose the Republican primary in Alaska against nihilistic extremist Joe Miller and Mike Castle lose the GOP primary in Delaware against embarrassing circus clown and former witch Christine O'Donnell, she probably thought she would be better off bowing out gracefully. Jim DeMint already had one of his teabagger lunatics, Michael Williams, in the race against her. Below is a video of Hutchison speaking with a gaggle of teatard morons, the kinds she would have to face for the next year if she decided to run:



Here's some astute analysis from PPP's Tom Jensen on what this means to Republican incumbents:

Hutchison's approval rating with Republicans on our last Texas poll was just 58%. To put that number into some perspective Lisa Murkowski's approval with Republicans in January of 2010 was 77% and Mike Castle's in March of 2009 was 69%. They both started out in a much better position against their Tea Party opposition than Hutchison would have, and they both lost anyway. A poll we conducted in September of 2010 found that only 25% of Republicans in Texas would support Hutchison for renomination to 62% who preferred a 'more conservative' challenger. It's doubtful Hutchison really would have lost by that sort of margin, but she certainly would have been in deep, deep trouble had a Tea Party challenger emerged.

The fact that someone like Hutchison who has generally been among the more popular Senators in the country and has always won by wide margins has been at least partially pushed out by the Tea Party is indicative of a new reality for Republican Senators- pretty much no incumbent is safe if these folks decide to target them. Among GOP Senators up for reelection next year we've found a 71% approval rating for Arizona's Jon Kyl with Republicans, a 53% approval rating for Maine's Olympia Snowe with them, a 74% approval rating for Massachusetts' Scott Brown with them, a 59% approval rating for Nevada's John Ensign with them, and an 84% approval rating for Wyoming's John Barrasso with them.

With the exception of Barrasso every single one of those folks has worse numbers with Republicans than Murkowski did just seven months prior to losing the primary, and most of them have numbers pretty comparable to where Castle's were as well. Now obviously not every single one of these folks is going to draw a viable, well funded Tea Party opponent. But if they do any of them could be in a lot of trouble- there is pretty much no Republican incumbent immune to a challenge from the right these days and Hutchison evidently saw the writing on the wall and got out. Not saying that's the only reason she retired but I'm sure it's a piece of it or else she would have made this decision a long time ago.

With Hutchison out of the race, don't look for DeMint's teabagger to become the favorite. Elizabeth Ames Jones, like Michael Williams a railroad commissioner, was already in, as was ex-Texas Secretary of State Roger Williams. Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst is likely to jump in and would probably be the front-runner when he does, although the same could be said for Attorney General Greg Abbott or Hutchison ally and Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert.

The Republican primary is probably the de facto election, since Democrats are so conservative in Texas that they couldn't inspire any progressives to bother voting and conservatives know which party is theirs. The three most likely conservative Democratic Party sacrificial lambs are ex-Comptroller John Sharp, ex-Houston Mayor Bill White and just-defeated ex-Waco Congressman Chet Edwards.