Congresswoman and U.S. Senate candidate, Shelley Moore Capito, immediately made the Club For Growth's shit list after announcing her candidacy to run for the seat of retiring Senator Jay Rockefeller (D):
http://www.clubforgrowth.org/...
“This year, the Republican establishment cheered the U.S. Senate candidacies of Congressmen Denny Rehberg and Rick Berg and former Congresswoman Heather Wilson. All three had the ‘right’ resumes, and all three had no ‘divisive’ primaries. Yet all three lost in races that were thought to be winnable,” said Club for Growth President Chris Chocola. “These three supposedly ‘electable’ Republican candidates also had something else in common: consistent support for bailouts, debt increases, earmarks, and massive expansions of big-government spending programs.”
“Today, along comes Rep. Shelley Moore Capito. Her candidacy will undoubtedly be cheered by the GOP establishment, and dire warnings will be issued against any ‘divisive’ primary challenges, lest other candidates hurt Capito’s chances of winning,” continued Chocola. “The problem is that Congresswoman Capito’s record looks a whole lot like the establishment candidates who lost this year. Congresswoman Capito has a long record of support of bailouts, pork, and bigger government. She voted to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, for massive expansions of government-run health insurance, giveaways to big labor, and repeatedly voted to continue funding for wasteful earmarks like an Exploratorium in San Francisco and an Aquarium in South Carolina. That’s not the formula for GOP success in U.S. Senate races.”
“The way back for the Republican Party is the way of Jeff Flake, Ted Cruz, Pat Toomey, Marco Rubio, Ron Johnson, Rand Paul, and Mike Lee. All were supported by the Club for Growth PAC and grassroots Republicans. All are consistent supporters of limited government principles. All were winners because they could clearly articulate the pro-growth economic message. They are the future of the Republican Party,” concluded Chocola. - The Club For Growth, 11/26/12
Well Capito also made the pro-choice group, EMILY's List, top 5 anti-woman targets of 2014:
http://thehill.com/...
EMILY's List, the group that works to support progressive female candidates, is adding five lawmakers to its list of top targets going into 2014, due to what the group calls their "appallingly anti-woman, anti-family records" and the availability of a strong challenger.
The group is highlighting Reps. Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.), Rodney Davis (Ill.), Gary Miller (Calif.), Daniel Webster (Fla.) and Bill Young (Fla.).
Capito announced late last year that she will be running for retiring Sen. Jay Rockefeller's (D-W.Va.) seat, giving both parties an open seat to pursue. - The Hill, 1/29/13
EMILY's List also noted that Moore Capito did not co-sponsor the renewal of the Violence Against Women Act. Politico defends Moore Capito's "moderate" label:
http://www.politico.com/...
Capito is unquestionably a moderate: She supports abortion rights, has voted to extend unemployment benefits and is in favor of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. In 2008, she ran a television ad that touted her willingness to break from her party by voting against tax breaks for oil companies and twice supporting an override of President George W. Bush’s veto of the SCHIP bill. - Politico, 11/26/12
West Virginia Blue did a breakdown of Moore Capito's "pro-choice" voting record and the GOP's definition of being pro-choice is certainly different from our definition of being pro-choice:
http://www.wvablue.com/...
What does Rep. Capito have to say about issues like contraception, Plan B, pregnancy, pre-natal care and abortion? Search this database of public statements for those terms and you come up empty. If I understand that database correctly, it means she's not mentioned any of those words a single time in a press release or floor speech. Maybe it's just not a very important issue for her?
What's her voting record? Four different organizations--one anti-choice and three pro-choice--have analyzed her voting record in Congress. She's been there 7 years now, that's plenty of time to build up a voting record.
Here are their ratings (I eliminated overlapping periods from the counts):
ANTI-CHOICE
National Right to Life Committee
Average of 3 ratings: 68% agreement
PRO-CHOICE
NARAL Pro-Choice America
Average of 5 ratings: 34% agreement
Planned Parenthood
Average of 2 ratings: 50% agreement
National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association
Average of 2 ratings: 30% agreement
Actions speak louder than words
The final tally
ANTI-CHOICE: 68% agreement vs. 32% disagreement)
PRO-CHOICE: 38% agreement vs. 62% disagreement)
For a "pro-choice" candidate, Republican Rep. Shelley Moore Capito sure votes in agreement with the anti-choice lobby an awful lot. It's hard to say you hold one position when you vote the other way almost twice as often!
Is this what passes for "pro-choice" in Republican circles? I don't know about you, to me it looks like a case of false advertising. - West Virginia Blue, 10/28/07
NARAL points out that Moore Capito also isn't a big fan of contraception:
http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/...
Last week, Rep. Moore Capito supported two egregious attacks on access to contraception, cancer screenings, Pap smears, and other basic health care. Moore Capito voted for an amendment to a bill that bars funding to Planned Parenthood for non-abortion-related medical care. Moore Capito took this attack one step further by voting to eliminate all funding for Title X, the nation’s only domestic family-planning program.
“Rep. Moore Capito’s constituents will soon know that her priorities do not lie with her district, but with the extreme anti-choice House leadership that is pushing an out-of-control war on contraception,” Keenan said. - Pro-Choice America, 2/22/11
Moore Capito also voted for H.R.358, also known as the "Let Women Die" Bill:
http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/...
On October 13, 2011, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R.358, an extreme anti-choice bill.
The bill would allow a hospital to refuse a woman life-saving, emergency abortion care even if she will die without it. On top of that, it effectively would ban insurance coverage of abortion in state health-insurance exchanges, denying abortion coverage to millions of women. - Pro-Choice America, 10/13/11
This is the conundrum Republicans like Moore Capito face these days. They can't please far right groups like the Club For Growth and they can't try to label themselves as "moderates" to voters when they vote for extreme legislator. All we can hope for is that West Virginia Democrats will at least nominate someone who is better than both Moore Capito and conservative Democratic Senator Joe Manchin (WV). I know EMILY's List are serious about defeating Moore Capito in 2014, lets just see if the Club For Growth can make good on their threat. If so and they find a successful fringe candidate who can beat Moore Capito, they'll be throwing this race to the Democrats.