Strange but true: Tea party activists said Sen. Orrin Hatch's record is too liberal.

[pampango]

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0611/57869.html

Despite his overtures to the tea party movement this year, the longest-serving Republican in the Senate, Orrin Hatch of Utah, still hasn’t won over voters like Darcy Van Orden, who hasn’t forgotten his moderate past and wants the National Republican Senatorial Committee to pull its support for him in 2012. Van Orden joined about 20 Utahns and a couple dozen more activists in front of the NRSC headquarters on Monday, in a protest organized by FreedomWorks, a Washington-based tea party organizing group.

Tea party activists say the six-term senator’s record is too liberal: He’s voted to raise the debt ceiling; he helped create the State Children’s Health Insurance Program; and he was an original co-sponsor of the immigration reform bill, the DREAM Act.

Headed by former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, FreedomWorks has carved out something of a niche bucking the Republican establishment by backing GOP primary challengers to incumbent lawmakers.

In the run-up to the 2010 midterms, FreedomWorks’s political action committee helped boost now-Sen. Mike Lee to an upset victory over Republican Sen. Bob Bennett of Utah in the state’s nominating convention. The Utah senator is Freedomworks’s first target of the 2012 election cycle. June poll numbers show Hatch is in trouble, with nearly six in 10 registered saying they’d vote against him

[PCIntern]

1. You know, it's not too hyperbolic to use the terms "Hitlerian" and "Nazi-like" anymore...

If Hatch is too liberal, then WTF is to the Right of that?

[RKP5637]

4. It's almost time for the tea party to issue standard uniforms. They've got all the

talk down, now they just need their uniforms. These people are a cut out of the past we thought was long gone. They never go away, always there under the surface ready to rear their ugly racist bigoted heads.

[MiniMe]

9. Let's not forget that he was friends with Ted Kennedy

And spoke at his funeral.

[no_hypocrisy]

2. IMO, it's not so much party purification as much as the Tea Party wants to covet Hatch's financial

contributors.

[NightWatcher]

3. Can we start a fund to purchase one-way tickets to TeaBaggerVille for these idiots?

Let's see, they want no government, no regulations, free market capitalism, no taxes, no education, no infrastructure....


How much do flights to Somalia cost, and can we get a group discount?

Let's give them what they want.

[RKP5637]

5. They would love it there, might even be cheaper to send them on cruise ships. n/t

[FSogol]

7. Cruise ships? Why spend gvt money, stack them on pallets and load them into container ships..

:shrug:

[RKP5637]

8. +1, n/t

[spedtr90]

6. He also offered some praise of the Progressive Budget

It's at least more than Democrats said. Dem support was an epic fail.

Hatch said on May 25:
“What budget would the majority of Senate Democrats support if they could? It is the House Progressive Caucus’ budget — an intellectually honest presentation of the liberal fiscal policy position. For interested folks, take a look at pages H2862—H2870 of the Congressional Record of April 15, 2011. There you will find the House Progressive Caucus budget’s fine print and the debate over it. I ask unanimous consent to include a copy of that budget in the record. The Progressive Caucus budget is real and it is ambitious. It is also politically risky. Like the House budget developed by Chairman Ryan, it took political courage. It’s a statement of policy principles and numbers.”