At least, the University of Montana law professor and president of the Montana Conservatives political group certainly strikes me as unrestrainedly liberal when it comes to his use of the dreaded L-word. He sees liberals lurking everywhere and, in a breathtaking Dec. 13 Missoulian guest column, asserts that the Montana Legislature consists almost entirely of liberals. Seriously!
Natelson and I go way back, and I consider him a friend. So, take it from me when I tell you he's sincere when he writes that he could find only a few conservatives in the 2007 Legislature and almost too few moderates to mention and that the rest - two-thirds of senators and four-fifths of representatives - were liberal. But also take it from me that you should never ride in Natelson's car: He couldn't see the middle of the road on a bet.
This leftist bent, he notes, applies to most Republicans as well as all Democrats.
Natelson and Montana Conservatives are demonstrably wrong. But before we get to that, it's worth taking a moment to consider what it takes, apparently, to qualify as a conservative - at least according to their Legislative Voting Survey.
To qualify as conservative, lawmakers would have to oppose such things as extension of the successful Children's Health Insurance Program, which not only provides insurance for the kids of working stiffs who don't get insurance through their jobs but also protects the rest of us from picking up the costs of treating the uninsured. They'd also have to oppose better mortgage-industry regulation, the need for which scarcely needs explaining in today's real estate market. And making the Montana Conservative grade requires opposition to investments in public education, work force training and economic development. In fact, if you look at the Montana Conservatives' survey, you'll see their brand of conservatism requires unyielding opposition to just about everything we, the people, might want to tackle through our government.
The Montana Conservatives' analysis, inexplicably, didn't even consider the $400-a-household tax rebate legislators approved for Montana homeowners, perhaps the largest tax give-back in Montana history. Nor did it consider the Legislature's fiscally conservative decision to tackle unfunded liabilities in pension funds. The analysis branded as "liberal" hard-nosed efforts to combat meth-related crime and funding needed to keep violent criminals behind bars.
To grasp how skewed the Montana Conservatives' rating system is, you need note only that not one legislator earned a perfect score of 100 in the Legislative Voting Survey - not even the most consistent and principled conservative I know, Rick Jore, the Lake County representative who defected to the Constitution Party because the right wing of the Republican Party wasn't conservative enough for him.
Now, it's fair to say that only legislators who vote in lockstep with the Montana Conservatives' agenda deserve the organization's seal of approval. Natelson & Co. reveal themselves as zealots, however, in contending that anyone who doesn't toe their line is a "liberal." Doing so is an act of self-parody that ignores the established definition of "liberal."
"Mainstream" is a more apt term for most legislators branded liberal by the Montana Conservatives.
Don't take my word for it. Montanans speak for themselves. A poll conducted Nov. 30 to Dec. 6 by Myers Research/Grove Insight shows that 18 percent of Montanans consider themselves liberals, 37 percent say they're conservatives and 42 percent call themselves moderates. At first glance, you might think those numbers almost corroborate what Natelson says about the Legislature's being left of the electorate. But look further into the poll, and you see Montanans don't interpret "conservative," "moderate" and "liberal" the way Natelson does.
In this poll, a whopping 69 percent said the state's on the right track, compared with 22 percent who said it's on the wrong track and 9 percent who were undecided. The most recent Lee Newspapers Poll, conducted last month by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research for the Missoulian and its sister papers statewide, yielded nearly identical numbers on a similar question. Clearly, Natelson is among the minority feeling stranded on the wrong track, but he's outnumbered 2-1 by fellow Montanans. These are not the numbers you'd expect to see if most Montanans thought their legislators were out of step.
In describing the Legislature, Natelson wrote, "Not a single Democrat could fairly be characterized as 'conservative' or 'moderate.' " Yet, in the Myers Research Grove Insight poll, 38 percent of Montanans said they would be inclined to vote for Democratic candidates for the Legislature this year, 38 percent said they'd likely vote for Republicans, and 1 percent said they'd vote for a candidate from some other party. These are the same voters who described themselves to pollsters as mostly "moderates" and "conservatives." The poll numbers correspond almost exactly with political divisions in the Legislature. These numbers refute Natelson's ridiculous contention that most legislators are way to the left of their constituents. The truth is that Natelson's Montana Conservatives are far, far to the right of mainstream Montanans, even those who view themselves as moderate and conservative.
Looking through the wrong end of binoculars, the Montana Conservatives would see little people everywhere they look. Similarly, they see liberals everywhere only because of the peculiar lenses through which they view the world. Their mind-set makes them blind to the advantages of collective problem-solving, and they generally consider anything that maintains or improves what Montanans do through their government as bad. No, not bad. Worse: liberal!
Montana has its zealous liberals along with zealous conservatives. But most of the people I know - and I'll bet most of the people you know - lean one way or the other but aren't absolutist about many things. Most of the Montanans I know are guided more by common sense and practicality in confronting real-life situations than by dogmatic political theory. In this regard, most legislators are more representative of the people than their most conservative critics.
Steve Woodruff is deputy regional director of Western Progress, a nonpartisan policy institute focused on states in the Rocky Mountain West.
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