Come Back Caroline Kennedy, All Is Forgiven

Apparently, the extra days to deliberate didn’t do Paterson much good, as he has apparently made a very poor selection to fill New York’s vacant Senate seat. Her Republican dynastic background doesn’t bother me in itself, but being a Blue Dog really should disqualify you from consideration for statewide office:

Gillibrand has described her own voting record as “one of the most conservative in the state.” She opposes any path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, supports renewing the Bush tax cuts for individuals earning up to $1 million annually, and voted for the Bush-backed FISA bill that permits wiretapping of international calls. She was one of four Democratic freshmen in the country, and the only Democrat in the New York delegation, to vote for the Bush administration’s bill to extend funding for the Iraq war shortly after she entered congress in 2007. While she now contends that she’s always opposed the war and has voted for bills to end it, one upstate paper reported when she first ran for the seat: “She said she supports the war in Iraq.” In addition to her vote to extend funding, she also missed a key vote to override a Bush veto of a Democratic bill with Iraq timetables.

Ugh. And if the defense is supposed to be that you have to be this conservative to win the district — which is not entirely unreasonable — that makes the pick even worse. If you’re going to pick a sitting member of the House, it should be from a safe seat. Now, we have a senator without progressive credentials and have handed the GOP a good pickup opportunity in the House. I don’t see how this can be defended.