Kathleen Parker

Kathleen Parker is an American journalist, identified as center-right, whose column was syndicated in 1995; she writes regular pieces for the Washington Post and USA Today, and appears on Chris Matthews' show on MSNBC. She started the column in 1987, while a staff writer for The Orlando Sentinel and joined The Washington Post Writers Group in 2006 Her columns are featured on Townhall.com.

While she is often identified as an American conservative, she writes that the "America is neither left nor right but centrist."

Centrists -- who may be broadly defined as fiscally conservative, socially libertarian-ish -- have been relatively quiet as "patriots" have made threats, building armies of "hunters" to bring down RINOs (Republicans in Name Only) and DINOs (Democrats in Name Only) or creating online "leper colonies" to post the names of those who, for example, dared speak out against Sarah Palin.

She has been criticized, by the Media Research Center, for "her compulsive failure to make it through a column without bashing religious conservatives." This, in turn, linked to James Dobson's criticism on her writing that the U.S. Republican Party needs to reduce the influence of the Christian Right. Dobson said,

Whatever she once was, Ms. Parker is certainly not a conservative anymore, having apparently realized it’s a lot easier to be popular among your journalistic peers when your keyboard tilts to the left. She writes that “armband religion” — those of us who “wear our faith on our sleeve,” I suppose, or is it meant to compare socially conservative Christians to Nazis? — is “killing the Republican Party.” Lest readers miss the point, she literally spells it out. The GOP’s big problem? G-O-D.

N-O-N-S-E-N-S-E.

Ms. Parker cites the election of Barack Obama as evidence that Americans no longer care much about the moral-values issues that have historically driven conservative voters to the polls.

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Her book "Save the Males: Why Men Matter, Why Women Should Care" was published in 2008 by Random House.