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.