Now, I’d agree with Brian Howey on attacking the hidebound obstinacy of folks like Pat “The Hair” Bauer to badly needed measures like the property tax caps. And given my lack of agreeing with Brian Howey on just about anything, that’s saying something.

In that sense, Hoosier Democrats have become the party of no. No to any consideration of local government reform. No to property tax caps. No to preserving the budget surplus in case the economy worsens. No to spending freezes on government programs. No to defending marriage. No to protecting gun rights.

Their opposition is reactionary. They’ll oppose anything that the Governor or the Republicans in the Senate propose. Whatever it is, they’re against it, as Groucho Marx sang it in Horsefeathers.

But Evan “Birch’s Boy” Bayh? Evan Bayh is a human weather vane (just look at the photo Howey dragged up of Bayh; that’s a great photo). He’ll always be pointing whichever way the wind blows. Evan Bayh doesn’t oppose things because the other side opposes them. He opposes them because he doesn’t have any core convictions of his own and has no political spine whatsoever.

(Read more after the leap)

House Democrats play on a rigged map. The Republicans can get several percentage points more votes than the Democrats in House races statewide (and routinely do, even in bad years like 2006 and 2008). The chances of The Hair and his House rep lackeys being held accountable for their obstruction is slim.

Evan Bayh has no such luxury. If he were to vote for every last item of Barack Obama’s agenda (as opposed to, say, 99.9% of them), Hoosier voters would send him packing just like they did with his father. And even the 99.9% probably isn’t looking too safe right now.

So Evan Bayh sometimes must say no to the mighty Obamassiah because he’s a human weather vane, the only person in Indiana lacking a spine (not that Bayh has ever really lived in Indiana, but I digress), and the House Democrats say no because the perverse gerrymandering of the map means that they never actually have to answer to thinking voters who look beyond the party letter next to their name. Thinking voters would take one look at the record of the House in this General Assembly and fire every Democrat in there.