The Party of Hope and Change Set to Bust Out the Big Guns at Blair House

Well now that the line-ups seem to be set for the health care summit, I must say I am beginning to feel a little queazy about things. Beyond the fact that it is their court, they’ve set the format, and they’ve installed their leader as the “moderator,” the side representing hope and change tomorrow is also going to have a pronounced advantage when it comes to Washington experience.

Let’s face it this group of Democrats scheduled to show up at Blair House tomorrow has been through some wars and with politics being a game that tends to reward knowledge, experience, cunning, and guile our side could be in for some tough sledding. Things could get real ugly real fast if our side isn’t at the top of their game from the outset.

With long-time established Washington pols like Dingell, Rangel, Baucus, Dodd, Harkin, Waxman, and Miller all ready to wage rhetorical war, the side representing us simple patriotic conservative Americans is going to have their work cut out for them to be sure.

Believe it or not the twenty one members scheduled to represent team “yes we can” together have over 590 years of experience battling in the political trenches of Washington DC. This is over 28 years of populist and demagogic experience per person. To put this in perspective, this means that the average Democratic lawmaker at the Blair House will have more experience than John McCain, who started his career in Washington way back in 1983. There are actually seven individuals on the Democratic roster that have at least eight more years of experience legislating in Washington than does the Republican senator from Arizona.

And this big government legislative all-star squad that the Democrats are set to assemble across the street from the White House tomorrow doesn’t really have a weak spot either. There isn’t one legislator on their roster that doesn’t have a wealth of inside the beltway experience to draw from. The least experienced members of their team have over 17 years of experience politicking on Capitol Hill. By contrast there are seven Republican lawmakers expected to attend who have less than 10 years of experience in Congress.

It’s actually pretty frightening to think of what could transpire tomorrow when you consider that John Dingell with his 54 years in the House has more congressional experience than these seven Republicans combined. I mean let’s face it legislators like Marsha Blackburn, John Kline, and Eric Cantor are mere political pups in comparison to Capitol Hill fixtures like Dingell, Rangel, Baucus, Dodd, etc.; and Washington newbies like Charles Boustany and Peter Roskam with not even nine years of inside the beltway experience between them are liable to be devoured tomorrow.

With 13 Democratic lawmakers scheduled to attend that each possess more than 25 years of experience pushing legislation on Capitol Hill we are going to just have to hope against hope that our guys can do what they’ve been doing so far, and that is simply hold the line.

Of course we could always hope that John McCain will simply lull them to sleep with stories of successful past efforts working together with those on the other side of the aisle. But more than likely Americans will simply be treated to an awesome display of big government rhetorical firepower by the true party of the establishment. Because when it comes to political con men Barack Obama will have a fine cast of supporting actors assembled.

Hey, nothing says hope and change like a bunch of wily Washington retreads mugging for the camera.

Hmmm, Evan Bayh the Fiscal Conservative

“Sen. Evan Bayh, D-IN, has always been somewhat fiscally conservative…,” writes Senior Capitol Hill Producer Trish Turner in her foxnews.com entry “With Bayh the Writing Was on the Wall…”

Somewhat fiscally conservative she says? She is talking about the Democratic senator from Indiana right? Well let’s take a look at Senator Bayh’s record and see if Turner has tagged him correctly.

For starters Bayh has a lifetime rating of 25 with the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (thru 2008). And though this rating does show him to be fiscally conservative as Democrats go (Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold are the only two current Democratic senators with higher lifetime CCAGW ratings) it does not make him anywhere near fiscally conservative. Olympia Snowe is no fiscal conservative, but her lifetime rating of 50 -- though it is the lowest of any current Republican senator -- is twice that of Bayh’s.

The result is much the same if you look at the National Taxpayers Union’s (NTU) congressional ratings. From 1999 when Bayh began serving in the Senate, thru 2008, he has received an average NTU rating of 19. Though he did 5 points better than the average Democratic senator over this period, the average Republican in the Senate bested his score by 55 points. To put Bayh’s score into perspective even further, Arlen Specter received an average NTU rating of 48 over this period.

And it really doesn’t matter what measure you use, either. The results are basically the same.

The Club for Growth has given Bayh scores of 2, 1, 9, and 11 respectively from 2005 to 2008 (Specter – 47, 40, 39, 39), the American Conservative Union gives Bayh a lifetime rating of 21 thru 2008 (Specter - 44), and from Americans for Democratic Action he has received an average score of 85 (with 100 being most liberal) over the course of his Senate career prior to last year (Specter – 41).

So when Evan Bayh says during his retirement announcement that “He has often been a lonely voice for balancing the budget and restraining spending,” you simply just have to laugh. Even if he added “within my party” to this statement it would still be ridiculous. After all this is a person who had a solid liberal record before he voted for massive government programs like Obamacare and the stimulus.

But no worries Senator Bayh, we know what you meant to say. Many of us out here have gotten pretty good at reading between the lines, and we are fully aware of how hideously leftist your party has become.

As for Turner’s mislabeling of the man, she is by no means alone in wrongly characterizing Evan Bayh and other “more moderately statist” Democrats like him as fiscal conservatives, centrists, blue dogs, etc. After all, the Democratic Party and the American media apparatus have a great deal at stake in making sure that the illusion of the Democratic Party as an authentic institution fighting on behalf of the public good is preserved for as long as possible.