TX-28: Cuellar and the Kiss of the Spider President

Pink Dome had a caption contest. My entry: "Never look a gift Democrat in the mouth." It's a funny picture, but it's caught on in the liberal blogosphere because Rep. Henry Cuellar is Bush's favorite House Democrat. He supported CAFTA, is anti-gay marriage, anti-choice, and supports school vouchers and repealing the estate tax. He endorsed Bush in 2000, and accepted a job from Republican Texas Governor Rick Perry as Texas Secretary of State. He then challenged and defeated a more liberal fellow Democrat, and personal friend of his, Rep. Ciro Rodriguez in the primary in 2004 in order to get elected to Congress. In many ways, he seems like a Republican disguised as a Democrat.

On Daily Kos, there were several articles yesterday about why Cuellar should be defeated:

TX-28: Cuellar sat on Republican side of aisle at SOTU
TX-28: Is this really a *Democratic* primary?
TX-28: More on Cuellar

Read them and judge for yourself. And while you're at it, you can check out the candidates' web sites here:

Henry Cuellar
Ciro Rodriguez

And you can get the San Antonio Express's take on all this here.

I'm leaning toward supporting Rodriguez considering all I've read about Cuellar. I honestly don't understand why Cuellar's a Democrat. And I also understand this is the liberal blogs' attempt to force some party discipline on the Democrats as they seem to be unable to do it themselves. But their other big target is Sen. Joe Lieberman, who I like (despite his annoying habit of airing Democratic dirty laundry for press coverage) and perhaps that's the reason I'm hesitant to step too far into the Cuellar v Rodriguez primary.