From his blog:

John Hostettler’s first press release is an attempted attack on Evan Bayh that’s a little tough to follow. Hostettler first assures voters that Bayh will vote against health care reform.

His argument is that Bayh will vote for his own economic self interest because Susan Bayh serves on the Wellpoint board of directors. Then, Hostettler says he would vote no, as well, but for the right reasons, apparently. Those would include doing what Hoosiers want.

Is that a distinction that will get you elected?

If you expect one press release to constitute the entirety of a campaign against someone with perhaps the Senate’s largest campaign warchest, then–obviously–no, a distinction made in just one press release is not something that will get you elected.

But Shella, almost certainly deliberately (you can just see the mustached doyen of the Statehouse reporters looking down his nose as he says “attempted attack”), is missing the point of Hostettler’s press release, to say nothing of its sarcasm and its irony.

Apparently, also, Shella has no concern whatsoever with the interesting correlation that has been proven–by folks inside (and here) and outside (also here and here) of this state–to exist between Evan Bayh’s voting habits and his wife’s financial interests as a member of the various boards of directors on which she serves.

It’s interesting that Hoosier newspapers, for example, can (rightly) busy themselves with endless editorials railing against the close relationship that the General Assembly has with lobbyists and special interests, but can then be almost completely silent about the relationship that Indiana’s junior senator has with special interests courtesy of his wife. Maybe Hostettler’s efforts will wake them up.

I suspect that Hoosiers will be concerned with this interesting aspect of Bayh’s finances. It’s good that Republican candidates challenging Bayh are making an issue out of these sorts of things; his opponents never bothered to highlight such shadiness before, and most newspapers in the state have tip-toed ever so delicately around the subject of Bayh’s votes relative to Bayh’s wife and their family’s financial interests.

And as for voters punishing elected members of Congress for their party’s sins, as opposed to their voting records, they have a habit of doing that. Evan Bayh could vote against ObamaCare and still find Hoosier voters punishing him for its passage (or just for the President’s folly in attempting it).

Irony of ironies, John Hostettler voted against most of the most unpopular policies of the Bush administration (the Iraq war, spending, government expansion, etc). Hoosier voters sent him packing anyway. It would be an interesting irony of history for Evan Bayh to meet the same fate.