Senator Orrin G. Hatch: Provoking a Split Within Conservatism Again

Newsmax.com ^ | 04-05-03 | Weyrich, Paul M.

[Theodore R.]

Senator Hatch: Provoking A Split Within Conservatism…Again Paul Weyrich

Monday, Apr. 05, 2004 The year was 1976. Ronald Reagan had lost the GOP's presidential nomination to Gerald Ford. The prospects for conservative victories in Congress were not very promising. But I was sure I had found a rising star. He was articulate. He was charismatic. He claimed to be a principled conservative. I thought of him as a potential presidential candidate.

As chairman of the Free Congress PAC, I backed him at the state convention (In his state you have to get a certain percentage of the convention vote to get on the ballot). We backed him in the primary, which he won convincingly. And we backed him in the general election when he became one of several western Republicans to defeat Democrat incumbents that year.

Two of my friends, however, did not share my enthusiasm.

Gordon Jones, a Utah native who had backed a rival for the Senate, warned me “you will find out that he is not what you think he is.” And Dick Scaife of Pittsburgh told me: “He is originally from Pittsburgh. He was the lawyer for some of the most unsavory characters ever to have infected our city. You are making a mistake. He is no principled conservative”.

Although both these men have been longtime friends and have never misled me, I proceeded to disregard what they told me. It is time to say once and for all: Gordon and Dick were dead right.

The "he" Gordon Jones and Dick Scaife were referring to was Orrin Hatch. Never has anyone with so much potential produced so little. The other day at a lunch in the Majority Leader’s office, the Senator from Utah lectured me on how unproductive it is to say unflattering things about him. But over these many years I have found that only when Senator Hatch has had to face public comments about his behavior will he respond and make at least half-corrections.

Before he was even sworn in Hatch attended a meeting of conservatives in Chicago hosted by The Conservative Caucus. He was welcomed as a conquering hero. But his words were disappointing. Later, he and I appeared on an evening program on WGN radio in Chicago. He didn’t want to be called a conservative, he told the host.

It went downhill from there. In his first term in office the issue of Labor Law Reform came up. Hatch wanted to compromise when no compromise was warranted. Reed Larson and I went to see Hatch to read him the riot act. He became so angry he stormed out of his own office leaving us sitting there, incredulously. But he returned to the reservation.

Then in 1982, Roger Stone, one of the least desirable characters I have ever encountered in Washington politics, wrote a memo at the request of Hatch. Stone said in that memo that Hatch had the right sown up. What he needed to do, Stone argued, was to move left.

Later that year Hatch seemed to be taking Stone’s advice. He split the pro-life movement. From 1974 on, following the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision the year earlier, the pro-life movement had rallied around a Constitutional amendment sponsored by Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL) in the House and Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC) in the Senate. But by coming up with an amendment of his own, Hatch caused people and groups to take up sides against each other. The movement never fully recovered from that split.

The reason I raise this now ancient history is that Hatch is at it again. The vast majority of pro-family groups are supporting the Constitutional amendment affirming that marriage is between one man and one woman sponsored by Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) in the House and Senator Wayne Allard (R-CO) in the Senate.

Hatch is now pushing an amendment of his own which, if brought forward, will again split the movement and will have the effect of guaranteeing no action at all.

(I well recall James Baker, then White House Chief of Staff under President Reagan, telling me when I pressed him for more action on the Right to Life issue: “When you people get your act together and are united, we’ll act, but not before.“)

The Hatch amendment this time would basically leave the issue of so-called "gay" marriage to state legislatures. Granted it would forbid court decisions a la Massachusetts but it would virtually guarantee a patchwork of different laws that would hardly lead to a national consensus.

Hatch says he has been pushing his amendment because the Musgrave-Allard amendment can’t make it. Indeed, he says it would be defeated in the Judiciary Committee, which he chairs, because Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) won’t vote for it, even "with prejudice."

(The phrase "with prejudice" means that although the Senator has voted to report legislation out of committee and to the floor of the full Senate for consideration, he reserves the right to cast a negative vote against the very same legislation when the full Senate votes on it.)

But the pro-family groups have yet to crank up in support of the Musgrave-Allard Amendment. And knowing that the committee chairman has a rival amendment, many senators will be reluctant to oppose him. Hatch plays hardball, especially with fellow Republicans who cross him.

Hatch has become a favorite of Democrats such as Sen. Ted Kennedy (D- MA). He thinks he has made great progress in getting them to compromise. Hatch’s conservative colleagues believe that the compromise has been nearly always in Kennedy’s direction.

For years, Hatch harbored the illusion that he might be placed on the Supreme Court. Alas, those days have passed. When I asked a key White House staff member of Bush ‘43 if Hatch would, at age 67, still be considered for the high court should there be a vacancy on the grounds that he is one Republican the Democrats wouldn’t filibuster, the gentleman in question couldn’t contain himself with laughter. He suggested facetiously that Kennedy would be considered first.

And although Reagan ran for President at age 70, Hatch will be 74 by the time 2008 comes around. Hatch’s time here has passed as well. So what is all this penchant for compromise about? Two things. Hatch wants to be loved by his enemies more than almost any Senator I have ever encountered in 38 years here. And second: His legacy. Hatch wants to be remembered as a great legislator.

On the first point, Hatch’s enemies don’t love him for his compromises. They have utter contempt for him. And unfortunately for him, he has made other enemies on the right in the process. And as for legacy, senators with principles on both sides are remembered in the country, they're just not admired. What real compromiser has a monument in this city?

Senator Hatch says that, despite the terrible things I write about him, he still loves me and prays for me. Well, Senator, I love you too. That is why I tell the truth about you. As long as you are alive, there is always time to change your ways.

Paul M. Weyrich is Chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation.

[Theodore R.]

At last the truth about Orrin G. Hatch!

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[ClintonBeGone]

What a wonderfully refreshing and right on article!

[Torie]

Demonizing Hatch, particularly via somebody like Scaife, is misguided. Hatch tries to be a political realist, who, alas, has made some serious misjudgments, particularly in connection with balkanizing the marriage laws, which would rapidly collapse like a house of cards. To suggest that Hatch is some closet fifth columnist liberal however, is quite silly. Putting folks into boxes is something that one in general should resist. Just address the merits of the issues at hand, and leave the personalities out of it, unless their demonstrated bad faith, and false pretenses, is clear and convincing.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Weyrich seems to be trying to generate a GOP circular firing squad.

[Torie]

Do you have any inclination to wade into the muck and the mire here?

[MinuteGal]

I have to agree with everything Paul has written about Hatch. When reviewing all the decades I've been involved in politics, I can't recall a greater disappointment to my conservative nature than the inconsistent, curious career of the senator from Utah.

In my salad days, he appeared to be a shining new knight in The Cause. Now in my oat bran days, I consider him a worn-out, befuddled Don Quixote, charging on his broken-down donkey at all the wrong windmills.....and scarcely realizing he no longer knows (or cares) what The Cause really is.

Leni

[Torie]

Weyrich has a certain unpleasant splenetic quality about him. JMO.

[Pukin Dog]

Oh Torie, come on.

Hatch is nothing but a whore. He is as without core beliefs as John Kerry. The fact that he is a Republican is for nothing but expediency. If it took him becoming a Democrat to keep his power, he would do so. The Democrats own Hatch like a rat in a cage. You cannot leave personalities out of this, as Hatch has been a consistent enemy to Conservative progress. He is a member of the do-nothing-so-we-can-maintain-friendships old-boy network for years.

[Criminal Number 18F]

...and a little bit about Sen. Arlen Specter, D-PA.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[FairOpinion]

What a terrific idea.

Let's have Republicans bashing Republicans in a presidential election year. (/sarcasm)

I am sure the Democrats couldn't be happier.

[GeronL]

Ah Yes, the Hatch-Specter Alliance..... too bad their in the wrong party. That big tent is killing us.

[discipler]

Thanks for the article.
I've been very disappointed with Hatch. He and Bob Dole seem to be similar in their approach. I used to get really ticked off at Dole the way he felt he had to say something good about his political enemy. "I have so much respect for the honorable Senator, blah, blah, blah." He should have been saying how much contempt he felt for the person. And Hatch has always been a weak spot in the Senate. His wimpy way has always sickened me.

[FairOpinion]

I am sure you would be happier with a Democrat Congress.

If it weren't for the derided "RINO-s" (justified or unjustified name calling), the Dems would have a majority in the Senate.

[GeronL]

Weyrich has a certain unpleasant splenetic quality about him

Shoot the messenger?

[Torie]

I don't think your opinion is "fair and balanced." Did you listen to Hatch when he was blasting Dems for filibustering judicial nominees, and viewed it as unprecedented and toxic? I think the man has his own loadstar, and it is a principled one. As I say, he sometimes fails in his judgments. Only I get all the judgments right, except when I don't. And there you have it.

[Torie]

Shoot the presentation. The guy would suck in sales.

[ClintonBeGone]

To suggest that Hatch is some closet fifth columnist liberal however, is quite silly. Putting folks into boxes is something that one in general should resist.

Spoken like a true RINO. This article is the best example I've ever seen of why Hatch is an such a terrible conservative.

[Pukin Dog]

The article explains the Hatch phenomenon well.

Hatch is a perfect Conservative in front of the cameras. Only when he is expected to deliver on his rhetoric does he fall short. WAY short. He fails not only in his judgments, he fails in his actions.

[Torie]

You no doubt are used to it now. It's amazing how this site puts up with me. :)

[GeronL]

The guy would suck in sales

yes he would. But he is right about Hatch and Specter

[Pukin Dog]

It's my old friend FairOpinion, spouting off at the mouth as usual. When Utah is about to bring a Democrat to the Senate, be sure to wake me, okay?

Orrin Hatch out of the Senate would not affect the majority in the least.

[Torie]

Specter is expendable. I will never forgive him for his conduct in the Bork hearings. Never. His conduct there was at once demagogic, and terminally ignorant and stupid. I have a long memory. Specter has a way below average IQ for his tribe. Sorry to be so un-PC about it. I know, it is not like me to be un-PC, except I sometimes stray off the the PC plantation. Maybe the problem is that the water is bad in Russell, Kansas, in which both Dole and Specter grew up.

[ClintonBeGone]

Funny you should question Dole and Spector when the guy you're defending - Hatch - is no better than the other two.

[blanknoone]

I hope Hatch get Toomeyed. Utah is conservative enough to elect a real conservative.

[Torie]

I call them as I see them. Finding differences in apparent similarities, and similarities in apparent differences, is what I get paid the big bucks for.

[GeronL]

To me Hatch, Spectre, Snowe, Chafee etc are all part of a different tribe.

[exit82]

Three words about Orrin: The Dream Act.

He gives RINOs a bad name.

[ClintonBeGone]

I call them as I see them. Finding differences in apparent similarities, and similarities in apparent differences, is what I get paid the big bucks for.

Anyone can count. Anyone can identify differences and similarities. The question is can they count and identify them accurately.

[Digger]

Let's have Republicans bashing Republicans in a presidential election year. (/sarcasm)

We can't have that now can we? What's really important is what's best for the good ole party, not for us Americans. I guess we need 85 Hatches in Congress. Yeh, that's the answer. BTW Hatch has sold all conservatives out every time the chance arises. If you are a true FReeper you must want TRUE conservative agendas being passed. Hatch is NOT your man. While we are at it - there will NEVER be a true conservative agenda ever presented in this "Two-Party Cartel". So run out like good little lemming pubbies & vote this thing back in office. Yeh, ya really showed them dems, right....as Hatch a$$ kisses the dems to secure their agenda.

[FairOpinion]

Please explain how a Democrat victory is good for the country and the American people.

[Cedric]

Hatch is like McCain, Conservative by popular reputation, but strangely always available when the Dems need a Republican to split the GOP or to bolster a Dem proposal.

[KC Burke]

have to agree with everything Paul has written about Hatch. When reviewing all the decades I've been involved in politics, I can't recall a greater disappointment to my conservative nature than the inconsistent, curious career of the senator from Utah.

In my salad days, he appeared to be a shining new knight in The Cause. Now in my oat bran days, I consider him a worn-out, befuddled Don Quixote, charging on his broken-down donkey at all the wrong windmills.....and scarcely realizing he no longer knows (or cares) what The Cause really is.

While Wyrich's been aptly described above by others as a perennial prompter for circular firing squads, I have to say your assessment of the heart of the matter with Hatch is dead on.

Someone was making a Sales analogy, and despite his flame and bluster during Presentations, Hatch is no Closer.

At the time of Impeachment, Hatch was so imperious that without the rock solid political sense of Phill Gramm, we would have seen a humiliating Censure Motion passed in place of an Impeachment vote.

[vaudine]

Well said. You nailed him.

vaudine

[Itzlzha]

Please explain how a Democrat victory is good for the country and the American people.

Easy!

If you are eating a crap sandwich provided by those you support, it seems to be in the (R) mold to just grin and eat, hoping for something better...

When you are "force-fed" a crap sandwich by your sworn enemy, it provides a rallying point for revolt and REAL change.

THAT is why we cannot tolerate the RINOs YOU apparachiks support so pavlovian! They are the ones that are FEEDING us crap, and you expect us to just grin and eat!

No more crap sandwiches from our supposed "friends"!

[KC Burke]

Dole, as a man that grew up and became a war hero even before conservatism was reborn in the early fifties from the isolationism of the America Firsters held the conservative floodgates against the high tide of liberalism when even Goldwater got waffley in his later years.

In minority, a compromise is often all you can get and he got thousands on his watch. He held the line until youngsters with a fresh constituency and fresh armor of principle could come to the line.

He was treated crappy by demagogue Nixon, when he was Party chair, and now, in retirement, his long service of contribution is being disparaged by people that weren't even in the fray.

[itsahoot]

Weyrich seems to be trying to generate a GOP circular firing squad.

Just d@mn, and he has an (R) by his name too.

Moderates have killed the conservative movement with their BIG TENT.

[aruanan]

Hatch is a bad egg.

[Torie]

Well Dole for all his talent, had a certain scar tissue psych, and I cannot forget ever his pathetic presentation when he ran for president. He made it all so meaningless, and was so lazy about it all. By the time he finally got the silver, his aging mind had become disengaged. Sad, really.

[rrrod]

IMHO, time for Hatch to move on...his obsession with getting non native born Americans to serve as pres. is almost comical. Perhaps if he spent more time going after the RATS instead of defending them i might be able to think seriously of him.

[hinckley buzzard]

" Did you listen to Hatch when he was blasting Dems for filibustering judicial nominees, and viewed it as unprecedented and toxic?"

I listened to him. It was a Joe Lieberman-style wrist slap. The response of a political panderer. Considering it was from the Chair of Judiciary, who had, after all, been personally and politically humiliated by the dems, it was nothing--pansy crap. Talk's cheap, and that's all Hatch did. Talk.

[Jaysun]

Scratch Hatch!

While we're at it,

Drain McCain

Blow Snowe

Strafe Chafee

[Theodore R.]

leave the personalities out of it

Is that possible? Politics is now as much about "personality" as anything else.

In an event, Hatch, on the big items, is as bad or worse than Specter because Specter never claimed to be "conservative." It's just that some misguided PA Republicans think that Specter is "conservative" enough. In that Specter was born in KA, and Hatch was born in PA, we can say that Hatch is the other "native-born" senator from PA.

[Theodore R.]

was so lazy about it all

Yes, but. Dole took off several weekends in September, and then in a final zeal of energy he campaigned (fairly effectively) for some 96 hours straight prior to the general election. Some think his late effort may have save a couple or three Senate seats for the GOP that year.

[Theodore R.]

Do you recall Hatch on the cable channels in 1998 "begging" Bill Clinton to "come clean" with the American people? If that were even possible for Clinton, he would have never done so. The result was that Hatch looked weak and meaningless. Yet UT Republicans cannot figure that out!!!!

[Theodore R.]

Did Specter grow up in Russell, or was he born there and then left as a small child for greener opportunities in PA?

[Theodore R.]

Yes, but Hatch and McCain cannot stand the sight of each other despite their similar personalities and penchant for splitting their own party. I don't know the root of their personal division. I had read somewhere that Arlen Specter and John Heinz, who agreed on everything, disliked each other immensely too. Years later, Specter "endorsed" Teresa Heinz (before she was Kerry) for the second PA Senate seat.

And John Adams and Alexander Hamilton, who shared philosophy and were co-founders of the Federalist Party, detested each other personally.

[Theodore R.]

Why do you think Hatch has been able to fool the "conservative" people of UT for so long?

[steve-b]

The Hatch amendment this time would basically leave the issue of so-called "gay" marriage to state legislatures.

Which is what all true conservatives recognize as the proper approach to an issue that inherently belongs to the states.

[brownie]

Fair Opinion,

You always seem to defend any GOPer. Is there ever a time, in your opinion, when it is o.k. to challenge and criticize a republican for not pursuing (or in fact hindering) a conservative agenda? If we followed your advice, and never questioned, challenged, or criticized, the GOP would become a tax and spend party that did not fight to get nominees confirmed . . .