Kathleen Parker

Kathleen Parker is a columnist for The Washington Post. Parker is a consulting faculty member at the Buckley School of Public Speaking, a popular guest on cable and network news programs and a regular guest on NBC's Meet the Press, and previously on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews. Parker considers herself politically to be "mostly right of center", has been described as a "conservative-leaning columnist", and was the highest-scoring conservative pundit in a 2012 retrospective study of pundit prediction accuracy in 2008. Early life and career Parker was raised in Winter Haven in Polk County, Florida, daughter of lawyer John Hal Connor Jr. and Connor's first wife, Martha Ayer Harley (originally from Barnwell County, South Carolina who died in March 1955 when Parker was 3 years old). Parker often spent summers with her mother's family in Columbia, South Carolina. Parker attended Converse College before Florida State University, where she received a Bachelor's degree in 1973 followed by a Master's degree in Spanish in 1976.