Kirsten Gillibrand is Left's Blue Dog Nightmare

The news that New York Governor David Paterson will appoint Congresswoman Kirsten Gillibrand to Hillary Clinton's seat in the U.S. Senate has generated the usual outrage on the hard left.

The New York Post indicates that the Gillibrand pick has Democrats "howling" in disgust.

The Gillibrand appointment is one more indicator that secular progressives couldn't care less about political moderation and pragmatic policy responses to national crisis. We have a radical litmus test in place for the new administration, and, again, the leftist pull in Congress and the netroots fever swamps will raise one of the most important political challenges to Barack Obama's leadership.

The Village Voice reports that Gillibrand boasts a 100 percent rating from the NRA and:

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.

Gillibrand's record naturally inflames Allison Kilkenny at the Huffington Post:

Gillibrand is a Blue Dog Democrat, which is the name moderate Democrats gave themselves so people stopped confusing them with Republicans. Gillibrand is a pro-gun, fiscally conservative "Democrat." Blue Dog Democrats are the people who cower at the word "liberal," and fail to acknowledge that the only gains we - as a country - have made regarding civil rights were because of those dreaded, damn liberals.

And considering that gay marriage extremism has become a marquee cause of secular progressives since the November election, expect Gillibrand to come under fire on homosexual rights (via the Politicker):

On the issue of gay rights, Gillibrand received an 80 out of a 100 rating from the LGBT advocacy group the Human Rights Campaign. That was the lowest score out of New York’s Democratic representatives. According to the Human Rights Campaign, she voted against the repealing of “Don’ Ask, Don’t Tell” legislation, opposed legislation that would grant equal tax treatment for employer-provided health coverage for domestic partners, opposed legislation to grant same-sex partners of U.S. citizens and permanent residents the same immigration benefits of married couples and opposed legislation to permit state Medicaid programs to cover low-income, HIV-positive Americans before they develop AIDS.