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.”
“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...)”
Greta is or was a Democrat. You could tell she liked Orrin, like she does Lindsey Graham and Karl Rive, because they are on her show a lot. I understand she might want to put on all views, but she has been actively promoting Hatch. Since she mostly does the show from Washington, she had plenty of segments taped from Orrin’s office. Now it seems she is basically endorsing him.
And she is defending Hatch as well. She is wrong on is record and misguided on him. So there was some bias when she asked her questions to Palin. It’s like Fox News is promoting the establishment guys.
And, ever since Bennett got his ass handed to him by the convention, Hatch has both talked and acted very conservative. Like he means it...
Well, Greta is a $cientologist.
I meant Rove above.
ditto
Hatch is one of the best arguments for term limits. When you have an yahoo from the other party occupying an office forever, that is bad enough. But when the yahoo is from your own party, its especially hard to stomach.
On what liberal lie do you base that bs?
You really ought to quit holding back, and just go all-in with the complete package of left-wing attack points about Sarah Palin. You know you want to.
Stop being such a moderate, and stand on one side or the other.
Moron Hatch? Isn’t he is John McCain lite?
TT
('nuff said.)
When Hatch called into Hannity’s show near the first of this month (to garner Hannity’s endorsement), Hatch threw his support behind Romney (after endorsing Mitt for the ‘08 run, too)!
So, after everything Palin’s done for the conservative cause; after all the arrows she’s endured for the conservative cause (at great expense to her and family), some of you folks want to discount her for this one issue? Are F-ing serious!
So tell us all you purveyors of all that’s conservative and rightous througout the land...WTF HAVE YOU DONE THAT EVEN COMPARES TO WHAT PALIN’S DONE...OR HAS ENDURED?
Sorry, but If some of you folks can do it better than Palin, get your sorry a$$es off the computer and run for President. AND DON’T MAKE ONE ERROR, OR MIS-SPEAK!
It’s gonna take a lot more than this to shake support from Governor Palin.
Come on.
“Is Hatch not a Mitt supporter?”
Considering they are both Mormons, I would say that he probably is.
“Well MIchele Malkin doesn’t like Sarah or Rick so who is she cheerleading for?”
Not sure. I’d say a candidate but I could be wrong.
So? People on FreeRepublic have been having heart attacks over amnesty and Perry and Obama etc...and who do you think is one of the leading Republican Senators in favor of it? That’s right...the Senator Palin thinks is so invaluable. If he can use that experience to clear the way for Judicial picks he can use it for amnesty.
See this is what I’m talking about. They all sale us out on one issue or another. There is no conservative saint and people should stop acting like their candidate is the precious exception to the rule. I’m under no illusions as to the warts of the ones I support and I won’t defend the candidates I do support when they are wrong. At least not anymore.
As for Mark Levin his primary cause is the courts so I expect him to be more favorable to Hatch just as I expect Malkin to rip Perry since her #1 issue is amnesty.
P.S. Palin isn’t even talking of the courts. She is trying to sale him as a friend to the Tea Party on fiscal issues. That is an untrue, it is the mark of a pragmatic politician wanting to earn some chips they can call in later. It’s not the first time she’s done this and it won’t be the last as long as she wants to retain ties to the Republican party.
Sarah needs to stay away from Greta. The sisterly comfort sometimes can lead her astray.
Sometimes I think I can see Sarah’s logic, kinda...McNasty, Gramnasty and Hatch have a how many year toe hold in their ditricts? Most likely a lot of control of them. I think they call it, entrenched. The margin of getting rid of them is like hedging a bet. The odds are high.
By not going after them herself, and by not casting shadows herself, she is some what marginalizing them. They can’t come back and say she’s whacked out crazy if there is the least appearance that of support. They want that support. They think they’re using her, when in fact, she’s just not making herself a good target for them. She let’s the Tea Party go after them. There are ways you can give support to a Tea Party candidate that don’t put you out there as a target.
I know for a fact that a very conservative democrat did this. Used to email our group to put a finger on somebody and move some $ support to their opposition. It almost whacked me out when I realized the person was a democrat. This was early in the game when we were just getting to know candidates outside our own districts and looking at the national scene. I hadn’t a clue who some of these people were.
I support real conservatives. Apparently, you don’t.
Read up. You are delusional.
Malkin isn’t a left wing attacker. She talks the truth.
IndyLiny hates Sarah Palin with such a strong passion that she has become totally irrational.
I think it boils down to Sarah's hot. Lindy's ....
I haven’t seen one with a backbone in so long.
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