If you had been a member of The NRA since the late fifties till now you would have known that Orrin Hatch was a closet Rino and always has been. Him and Specter where and are two peas in the same pod.
Orrin has always been extremely sharp in what he does. If you check his voting record you will find he is a strong supporter of the Second Amendment and has received high marks from the NRA.
But if you check what he has done as committee chairman of the Senate Judiciary you will find you have him to thank for the Clinton Assault weapons band.
It was dead in his committee with two weeks left and it was he who brought it up for the committee to vote on knowing if it got to the floor the Democrats had the votes to pass it.
He brought it up at the request of one of his Democratic committee friends and his buddy Specter cast the deciding vote to get it to the floor and then on the floor they vote against it to keep their NRA voting record clean.
This has been a favorite tactic of his on Gun Legislation for twenty years or longer.
if you remember during the Clinton impeachment he and Specter both showed some measure of support for Clinton while speaking to the press.
<*sigh*> I really wasn't paying as much attention then as I am now. But that underscores what I said earlier about Bush having to consider who in the Senate is really in his corner when he nominates someone. I really respected Orrin Hatch, but it pissed me off when I found out that he had suggested Ginsburg. I can sort of understand most Republicans voting for her, even though she is so far to the left ideologically, because Clinton had won the election and therefore had the right to nominate whomever he pleased. That's basically what we're asking the Democrats to do for Bush's nominees, to recognize that Republicans won, and that therefore Bush gets to choose whomever he wants. But there's a big difference between that and actually SUGGESTING Ginsburg as a nominee!
As much as I distrust him, I doubt that Orrin G. Hatch was the first to recommend Ruth Ginsburg for the high court. I think he told the Senate Democrat leaders that Republicans would not object if Ginsburg were nominated. And to show his own "bipartisanship," the popular Utah "Republican" co-sponsored her nomination.