TNR: Evan Bayh is Not a Stealth Conservative

[nsd]

The powers that be seem to have decreed this Evan Bayh Week on the veep speculation front, and Nate Silver has a nice post (from which the above chart is drawn) questioning the conventional wisdom that Bayh is a Republican in a Democrat's clothing. As he puts it, "there is no senator more liberal than Bayh in any state more conservative than Indiana." This is somebody from a deep red state who has voted against extending the Bush tax cuts; against confirming John Bolton, John Roberts, and Sam Alito; against the gay marriage amendment; against cloture on cutting the estate tax; in favor of comprehensive immigration reform; in favor of S-CHIP expansion; in favor of stem-cell research; in favor of restrictions on detainee treatment; and in favor of the Iraq troop-withdrawal funding bill. He even opposed CAFTA. It's true that he sided with Republicans on tort reform, partial-birth abortion, and a flag-burning amendment, but do Democrats really want to be the kind of party that makes litmus tests out of those issues?

TNR




ETA: Added chart

[book_worm]

1. Exactly and last week was Tim Kaine week.

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

2. That's right and why it won't be Bayh. I think the Obama camp is pulling a fast one.

[Skwmom]

3. Bayh is from the corporate wing of the Democratic Party. So the whole "Change you can believe in"

would be a lie. B/c with the corporations controlling our govt there will be no change.

[wyldwolf]

6. what, exactly, does that mean?

:shrug:

[yellowdogintexas]

4. I lived in Indiana when he became Gov. He immediately got rid of the for profit license tag

offices, which basically funded the party in power at the time. Those places were just horrible to deal with. Changed everything to a normal car registration like all the other states have, where the state actually gets the money. IIRC, cost of auto registration went down.

He was such an improvement over the prior administration!

And besides he was raised by one of the Good Guys: his father Birch Bayh was a great Democrat. Somewhere, some of it had to have rubbed off.

[librechik]

5. And the New Republic is an expert on those!

they are DLC converts, and supported the Iraq War.

[nsd]

7. For what it's worth, the chart and original post are from 538.com (nt)

[trewsx11]

8. The notion that Bayh is a conservative = asinine

He is centrist much in the tradition of Bill Clinton and Al Gore (the Al Gore from 1992, not 2008).

[Skwmom]

9. What is a centrist? Code for a politician beholden to corporate lobbyists?

Yeah, we've all seen how well that has worked for this country.

[trewsx11]

13. It worked great for this country.

8 years of peace and prosperity under Clinton/Gore

[Skwmom]

14. Because the damage done by Clinton didn't come to light until AFTER

he left office. And Clinton is smart so he can't blame it on stupidity. It was just a person willing to do anything for power.

[DefenseLawyer]

10. Bayh is a calculating politician

just like they ALL are. Who knows what any of them truly believe, really. He did what he needed to do to get elected governor twice and then senator in a red state. I don't think that makes him a "stealth conservative", it just makes him a politician that knows how to get elected. Of course we can debate the merits of this kind of politician, but obviously if you can't get elected to can't do anything else.

[geek tragedy]

11. He voted FOR the Bush taxcuts in 2003.

Him and Zell and Ben Nelson.

[hedgehog]

12. If I read that chart properly, Obama would have a hard time

finding a senator as liberal as himself. Both Clinton and Biden are slightly more conservative.

(That's based on the ranking given by whoever devised the chart. Someone else's chart may have different results!)