Posted on 08/19/2011 5:24:40 PM PDT by Mozilla
I just read a very bizarre blog post about entrenched incumbent Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch by Fox News anchor Greta van Susteren and then watched an equally distressing interview van Susteren conducted last night with Sarah Palin regarding Hatch.
First, the title of van Susteren’s blog post: “Is someone trying to manipulate the UTAH Tea Party vote unfairly away from Senator Orrin Hatch?”
Van Susteren absurdly suggests that dark, sinister, unnamed, and uninformed forces in Utah with outside backing are somehow trying to take away Hatch’s seat through nefarious means. She’s clearly talking about D.C.-based fiscal conservative groups like FreedomWorks and Club for Growth that support possible GOP primary challenger and current Rep. Jason Chaffetz (whom I also support). But she won’t come out and just name these groups. What gives?
Moreover, she fails to explain how it’s bad for a few Beltway-based groups to “manipulate” the race by encouraging primary challengers, but it’s fine for Beltway-based van Sustern to influence readers with her ill-informed dissection of the race and her promotion of Hatch’s purported Tea Party bona fides.
Hatch’s people have lined up big national guns from outside Utah to help him hold on to his power and perks. It seems clear to me Hatch is calling in every last chit he has amassed over four decades in the Beltway. It’s the only rational explanation for the beyond-laughable promotion of Hatch as a — gag — “Tea Party visionary.”
[snip]
Utah voters themselves sent a clear, potent message that entrenched incumbency is no argument for more entrenched incumbency last May when they booted Hatch’s Senate big government Republican colleague Bob Bennett from office in the primary. Were they “manipulated,” too?
Van Susteren’s sloppy blog post (which doesn’t include a single hyperlink) provides erroneous facts about the Tea Party movement, erroneous characterizations of the core Tea Party agenda, and erroneous analysis of Hatch’s fiscal record after three decades in office. After insinuating that unprincipled motives are fueling those who oppose Hatch, she wraps up with a rather specious conclusion that based on Hatch’s creaky old support for the balanced budget amendment, she “would think that fact alone would make him the champion (the visionary?) of the Utah Tea Party.”
She ends with a question: “Am I wrong?”
Flabbergastingly so.
[snip]
Orrin Hatch is the antithesis of the Tea Party spirit. He is a mascot for big-spending Beltway entrenched incumbency who has consistently joined hands with destructive Democrats.
He slobbered over corruptocrat Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd.
He co-sponsored the $6 billion national service boondoggle and dedicated it to his good friend Teddy Kennedy, with whom he also joined hands to create the ever-expanding SCHIP entitlement.
He supported tax cheat Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner from day one, lavished praise on Joe Biden’s balls, and embraced and defended Attorney General Eric Holder’s nomination because, he said, “I like Barack Obama and I want to help him if I can.”
He was an original sponsor of the open-borders DREAM Act illegal alien student bailout and voted for the massive TARP bailout.
And there’s much, much more from his support for Fannie/Freddie bailouts to farm subsidies and beyond.
Most importantly: How do Utah Tea Party people feel about Tea Party pretender Orrin Hatch?
The same way they feel about his former big-spending entrenched incumbent in Utah — former Sen. Bob Bennett…
[snip]
And yet on her TV show interview with Sarah Palin Thursday night, van Susteren accused Tea Party folks of factual omissions.
[snip]
She then went on to minimize opposition to Hatch as “small” and criticized Hatch’s critics as “disruptive.” Van Susteren looked perplexed and irked that Tea Party people would want to turn out an elected incumbent in the Republican Party.
Hello? From day one, the nascent Tea Party movement has always been about holding both parties accountable for their records. “Disruption” of Washington business as usual is the entire raison d’etre of the grass-roots revolts and out-of-control taxing and spending. Token support for a balanced budget amendment means nothing if the BBA sponsor has spent nearly 40 years — as Hatch has — rubber-stamping expansion after expansion of the welfare and entitlement state, then hooking up with corruptocrat Dems like Chris Dodd and Teddy Kennedy to preserve and protect pet boondoggles.
Most devastating of all, Palin offered ZERO rebuttal of van Susteren’s nonsense and agreed that Tea Party folks should “work with” Hatch instead of “shoving him out.”
VAN SUSTEREN: You know, I see a lot of good, hard-working Americans who are in the Tea Party movement. And then, you know, from time to time, I see things like — you know, today — today, I wrote on Gretawire a blog about what’s going on within the Tea Party movement to Senator Orrin Hatch. I mean, he’s getting attacking by a small portion of the Tea Party movement for not being Tea Party-ish enough, and it’s — and it fundamentally goes around the balanced budget amendment, which is so — which is the mantra of the Tea Party movement.
But if you do a little research, Senator Orrin Hatch going back to 1979 in the U.S. Senate was pushing the Tea Party — a balanced budget amendment. Yet some of these people in the Tea Party movement won’t recognize it. They won’t look at the facts and they go after him. So it’s, like, even within the Tea Party movement, there is — you know, there’s a disregard for the facts and an effort to be sort of disruptive even within the — within the group.
PALIN: Well, and you’ll find that within any venue, within any group, Greta, especially when it involves politics. But to your particular point about Senator Orrin Hatch — he is doing good in terms of trying to get a balanced budget and he has been for the last couple of decades. And he’s pushed hard for some fiscal reforms that we have got to see implemented, otherwise, you know, crony capitalism is going to continue coming out of Washington, D.C., and we’re going to continue on the wrong path and we will be bankrupt.
So people like Orrin Hatch, who now especially — he’s rising up with quite aggressive talk about the balanced budget amendment and other things that he has seen for all these years need to be done. We need to be agreeing and embracing his idea and working with him to make sure that that happens, instead of shooing him away and shooing him out of a Tea Party movement, if you will, when he agrees with such a basic fundamental principle that we must see implemented, and that’s just simply balancing the doggone federal budget!
Is this the same Palin who just a few weeks ago boldly (and rightly) wrote: “Everyone I talk to still believes in contested primaries.”
I wish Sarah would quit hanging around with Greta. Hatch is a fool and I hope Sarah is sincere when she says she won’t play the game.
Bump
Sooner or later people will realize that Palin
is bought and paid for by inside the beltway money.
So who is closer to being clinically mentally retarded? Shep Smith or Greta? Or both?
She is so clueless and always has been. Without OJ and incredible good luck with regard to timing, we’d never know who she is. (lot of that going around at Fox come to think of it...)
Well MIchele Malkin doesn’t like Sarah or Rick so who is she cheerleading for?
Socialists are evil and their goal is obvious. Orrin has done well but unlike Patton he does not know that the enemy must be defeated COMPLETELY,ENTIRELY AND WITHOUT MERCY. And people! please understand. The Democratic party is now wholly owned by the same movements that left Europe and Asia ablaze in the 30’s to 50’s.
Is someone trying to manipulate the UTAH Tea Party vote unfairly away from Senator Orrin Hatch ?.
Hatch isn’t so bad. He’s only a part time RINO not as bad as the Northeast twisted sisters and the Kennedy seated one.
Well, Sarah backed the RINO Hatch.
She’s not a positive 1,000% conservative. Let’s dump her....Not pure enough...
Shooing him out? He was never in the movement.
Just another cynical politician getting religion right before an election.
Is this an example of how Sarah is so perfect that no ordinary conservative could ever measure? don’t get me wrong. I’d vote for her, Michelle or Perry in a general election. I’m making no promises about Romney.
I’m just a little fed up at people acting like she doesn’t have her own faults and that she isn’t motivated by politics when it suits her purposes. There is no reason to support Orrin as a conservative. Utah is a safe state and his competitor a better choice as Senator. The only reason to support him is to ingratiate yourself with the establishment. And they all do it to some degree if they want to advance in a political career.
Hatch is in Utah. They are in northeastern states. I would say it’s worse to have a Senator that could be 100% and if far from it then one you expect to compromise because they represent Maine.
So Malkin has taken a break from ripping Perry to now trashing Palin.
I wonder who she’s backing?
Palin is just as entrenched in the establishment as the rest. She has to be or she hasn’t a chance to win.
It just ain’t cool to be because they know we can’t stand them. People are getting gamed.
I am tired of the games. The idea was to get rid of the old guard. Ain’t gonna happen.
And who is your “non-beltway” candidate?
I don’t think she knows how to cheerlead, just criticize. She is kind of like Mikey the kid who hates everything.
Hmmmmm..maybe because Chaffetz (his primary challenger) endorsed Mitt Romney?
http://www.dailypaul.com/170185/jason-chaffetz-and-mike-lee-pick-religious-affiliation-over-principle
(sorry about the source)
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