by the Left Coast Rebel
Huh? You have to love these beltway types. You have a grassroots movement in America that is truly the first activist network of it’s kind for limited government causes and the beltway types can do nothing more than gnash their teeth. Full disclaimer: I have never been a fan of Orrin Hatch, all the way back to the Clinton administration. For what it is worth, his opinion holds no weight with my anyway. I gleaned this from the Salt Lake Tribune:
Via MemeorandumHatch blamed extreme conservatives for the 2008 defeat of Sen. Gordon Smith, a politically moderate but fiscally conservative Republican from Oregon.
Hatch said if the Tea Party had not backed a constitutionalist candidate in that race, Smith wouldn’t have lost to Democrat Jeff Merkley, whom Hatch described as “the most liberal senator,” by 45,000 votes.
But Hatch’s critics said he was not interested in listening to them.
“I think you guys are as out of touch as you can get,” said Sarah Beeson, of American Fork. Hatch, she said, appeared more interested in raising money for candidates than listening to what the people had to say.
Beeson had been a state GOP delegate, but is now disaffected from the Republican Party and considers herself an independent. If the GOP comes back to constitutional principles rather than clutching fear, she said, she would come back to the party.
LCR: Hatch, as you appear to know very well, has long been a RINO. One of his best senate friends was the late (but not particularly great) E.M.K.
ReplyDeleteWhat happens is that these politicians leave their districts after winning their elections, and, for the most part head to D.C. full of fire in the belly and wanting to do the right thing a-la Jefferson Smith in Frank Capra's legendary 1939 film….
Sometime later, an effete elitism virus infects them and they begin to actually believe that they were sent to Washington to rule rather than to serve. At that point they have lost all touch with their constituents in their home districts and their new constituents are one another and the vast bureaucracies, law firms and lobbyists who pollute the District of Columbia.
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ReplyDeleteOrrin Hatch: It's Dog Track Time