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Sunday, February 7, 2010
LAMBRO: Bayh a tough sell in Indiana
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By Donald Lambro <http://www.washingtontimes.com/staff/donald-lambro/>
If you want more evidence of how deep Democratic losses may be in the
fall midterm elections, Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh's suddenly shaky bid for
a third term is Exhibit A.
A few months ago, Mr. Bayh was considered a shoo-in for re-election in
the Hoosier state. Now election handicappers have moved him from "safe"
to endangered.
Within hours of former Sen. Dan Coats' announcement Wednesday that he is
considering challenging Mr. Bayh, the dynamics of the race changed
dramatically. The conservative Republican's "likely entry into the
Indiana Senate race puts another seat into play," said election
forecaster Stuart Rothenberg. "Move from Currently Safe to Narrow
Advantage for the Incumbent Party," he wrote .
However, the senator's "narrow advantage" may be precarious, according
to recent polls that show growing disapproval of the two-term senator,
who once had presidential ambitions.
Despite Mr. Bayh's once carefully cultivated image as a party moderate,
he has lurched left under the rhetorical spell of the Obama presidency
and the pressures of the Senate's liberal Democratic caucus.
He voted for the $2.5 trillion Obamacare bill despite strong opposition
back home, where polls showed 60 percent opposition. He backed President
Obama's $800-billion-plus stimulus bill, which has failed to create the
3.5 million jobs Mr. Obama promised. He supported Mr. Obama's unpopular
move to remove terrorist prisoners from Guantanamo Bay and try them in
civilian courts.
This was not the sensible, moderate Evan Bayh who once chaired the
centrist-leaning Democratic Leadership Council that declared war on the
liberal wing of his party. He broke with his state's right-of-center
political traditions, and Indiana voters are breaking away from him.
A statewide Rasmussen poll of likely voters released Jan. 25 showed him
trailing Rep. Mike Pence, the House Republican Conference chairman, by
44 percent to 47 percent. Mr. Pence, however, has decided to remain in
his leadership post. A matchup with Republican former Rep. John
Hostettler was a virtual dead heat.
More troubling, Rasmussen found that just 23 percent of likely Indiana
voters had a "very favorable" impression of Mr. Bayh, while more than 40
percent had a very or somewhat unfavorable view or were unsure.
But the political wake-up call, apparently, didn't hit him until
Republican Scott Brown won Edward M. Kennedy's seat in Massachusetts
with a campaign agenda of lower taxes, reduced spending and voting no on
Obamacare.
Suddenly, Mr. Bayh was issuing fire-breathing denunciations of his
party's left wing, calling on Democrats to reset their agenda and
backing away from some of his previous positions.
Democrats had pushed their agenda too far to the left, driving away
independents and moderate voters, Mr. Bayh said. "Whenever you have just
the furthest left elements of the Democratic party attempting to impose
their will on the rest of the country, that's not going to work too well."
The lesson to be learned from Massachusetts is that independents and
middle-of-the-roaders "just don't believe the answers we are currently
proposing are solving their problems. That's something that has to be
corrected," the shaken senator told ABC.
Now Mr. Bayh is attempting to rehabilitate himself politically, even to
the point of trying to scrub his own leftist votes from his record. To
wit, there he was on "Fox News Sunday" telling Chris Wallace that he no
longer would support trying terrorists in federal courts.
Back in November, he voted with his Democratic colleagues against a bill
that would have prohibited federal funds being used to prosecute anyone
involved in the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, in federal civilian
courtrooms.
"No amount of political posturing can change the fact that Bayh voted
for his party's foolish attempt to try terrorist killers in American
cities - a terribly misguided plan that was overwhelmingly rejected by
voters in Scott Brown's recent victory in Massachusetts," the National
Republican Senatorial Committee said in a campaign broadside this week.
A four-term congressman, former senator and former ambassador to
Germany, Mr. Coats' presumed entry into the race is another big
recruiting victory for NRSC Chairman John Cornyn who has a lot more
reasons to think that a bigger political wave is building against the
Democrats and is rapidly expanding his list of potential upsets.
But Mr. Coats is starting late, has yet to get his fundraising going,
and faces an incumbent with $13 million in the bank who has won many
statewide races, including two terms as governor.
On the other hand, Mr. Bayh also has a long voting record that supported
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Mr. Obama, and that in the end may
be more than enough to beat him.
/Donald Lambro is a nationally syndicated columnist./
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