Kay: where do you stand on unemployment insurance?

The effervescent and always well dressed Jason Embry this morning blogged that Kay's stance on stimulus UI money is "open to interpretation." Look at the url, though...

http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/firstreading/entries/2009/03/24/hutchison_fuzzy_in_response_to.html

Originally, it must have been titled "Hutchison fuzzy in response to..." ("Rick's UI position..." or something like that.)

Open to interpretation is a much nicer and way more journalistic way of saying fuzzy.

Excerpts follow from Embry's blog (link):

U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison was in town and spoke to the Texas Daily Newspaper Association. Afterwards, she took a few questions from reporters, and because her initial response was vague, we asked her a couple of times about her reaction to Gov. Rick Perry’s decision to turn down federal stimulus aid for extended unemployment benefits.

Here are her responses:

And a followup question:

To recap, Hutchison said that while she agrees with Perry’s concern about expanding the unemployment program, as the federal stimulus package requires in order to receive the money, she said he should be looking for creative ways to manage the fund to lessen the impact on businesses who pay taxes into the fund (and who are looking at a tax increase because of a looming deficit in the fund).

Embry goes on to catalogue all the different mainstream media interpretations of Kay's verbal dance party (she's all over the place!). After watching those videos, I can't blame any of the media for having no idea what her actual position is. I am still confused.

UPDATED at 10:41 AM...
Check out the video on the Houston Chronicle site (link). The Daily Horse Race blog says almost exactly what I was thinking in its analysis of the Chronicle video (link). Excerpt:

I think Perry won the exchange here–not necessarily on substance (that’s obviously up to voters), but that his message is clear. Let it serve as an early-in-the-race lesson to Hutchison: when the race heats up, her current popularity alone won’t let her sail to victory. She still needs a compelling reason to run.

Exactly. I would love to a reporter to ask each candidate the infamous "Ted Kennedy" question. Why do you want to be Governor? Or even, why do you think you would make a better Governor than the person running against you? I think Rick has already found his campaign voice, while Kay is just going through the motions thinking she can coast to victory. I am not sure she would be able to answer those questions as succinctly as Rick right now.