I've heard many people say that Dean is a fiscal conservative, and at least some of them do so in the hopes that this will help him appeal to Independant and "sane" Republicans. Different verbiage may be more effective.
Fiscally conservative to most people, especially the "target markets" above, has come to mean lower taxes, smaller government, and reduced spending. Finding out that HD isn't, in fact, a fiscal conservative (within the definitions they've come to accept) may leave people feeling deceived after they do a little research, and still leaves us vulnerable to charges of "Dean is a wacky big-government liberal".
Instead of "fiscal conservative", I'd like to suggest "fiscally responsible". Not only is the term more accurate, it has implicit positive connotations for Dean, and negative ones for Bush (i.e. Bush is fiscally irresponsible).
Trying to attach a positive connotation to "fiscal conservative" is yielding ground in an ideological debate that we don't have to yield, mostly because the right has been so effective in hammering home the definition of conservative.
We should be setting the terms of the debate by reshaping the argument in terms of responsibility vs. irresponsibility, rather than trying to position ourselves as "more conservative about money" than Bush.