Nate Silver and "The Most Powerful Women In America"

Nate Silver, in his digs over at FiveThirtyEight, applied his considerable statistical and analytical skillz to the current Senate.

Specifically, he's been looking at the potential for a Republican filibuster of the Obama stimulus plan; and from there he's identified the most powerful women in America.

His analysis is fascinating, but one thing jumped out at me:

While [Texas Senator Kay Bailey] Hutchison is further down the list, she is clearly angling to be a thought-leader in the GOP and is likely to be a wild card on certain issues, having voted with the administration, for instance, on SCHIP and the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

I think we now know why she wasn't chosen to be the Republican VP candidate.