Legacy newspaper columnist Chuck Malloy offers up an interesting bit of historical fiction in his latest column on Idaho government and Idaho's lieutenant governor. 

Writes Malloy, "It wasn’t long ago when now — Lt. Gov. Scott Bedke was part of a House leadership team that was widely viewed as one of the most conservative in Idaho’s history."

Malloy uses this line as a springboard to claim that anyone alleging Bedke is not a conservative is simply lying. And then, he quotes from Bedke himself to substantiate his thesis. But I've traveled the country, and exactly zero people have remarked to me regarding Bedke or Idaho's Legislature generally being conservative. I've also seen the truth firsthand and documented Bedke's positions in our Idaho Freedom Index over the last decade.

Bedke has a voting record that puts him comfortably in league with leftist Democrats. The most notoriously leftist policies in the state over the last several years can be traced back to him. Malloy conveniently dodges this point in order to activate Orwell's Memory Hole. Allow me to turn the device off:

• In 2013, Bedke's first year as House speaker, he helped push through the implementation of an Obamacare insurance exchange.

• In 2015, he helped push the passage of a gas tax increase. Through his entire tenure, he blocked consideration of a grocery tax repeal. 

• During his time as speaker, Bedke blocked efforts to expand Second Amendment protections. 

• Bedke presided over and did nothing to stop a massive expansion of government spending, the state budget having doubled in his tenure. 

• In 2019, Bedke promoted, supported and assisted the passage of the unconstitutional and intrusive Idaho Patient Act, carrying the water for political donor Frank Vandersloot.

• And now, Bedke is traveling the state promoting Gov. Brad Little's new socialist Idaho Launch program. 

None of these are conservative positions. Bedke talks a good game, and for the nearly 30 years I've known him, he's been quite (rightfully) passionate about the federal government's mismanagement of public lands. It's one of his major issues, the other being water rights. Beyond those issues, Bedke, at least through his actions, couldn't care less about how large or how intrusive state government has become. 

He's willing to have government do more and take more from you in order to achieve the ends sought by leftists. 

And this makes him the darling of special interest groups and writers like Malloy. 

It wouldn't matter one bit that columns like these get written, except that Malloy writes as if he's repeating obvious truths. He's not. He's rewriting history. He's merely sucking up to and doing the bidding of another leftist Republican looking to deceive Idahoans in order to maintain power and acquire more.

Bedke will be Idaho's next governor if only Malloy and other writers can maintain the fiction. The least I can do is make sure someone is recording Bedke's true history correctly.