Orrin Hatch’s Beltway Barnacle Legacy

Seven-term former U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah died last weekend, and accolades came pouring in from both sides of the political spectrum. This is not any kind of testament to his character or ability to “bring both sides together.” It’s really just proof that the toxic Washington Swamp is run by a uniparty of entrenched elites and their corrupt coterie of oligarch donors.

I’ve said it for more than two decades, and I’ll say it again because no one else will: The unvarnished truth is that Orrin Hatch was an open-borders globalist who served Big Tech oligarchs, U.S. Chamber of Commerce traitors and USS government careerists while stabbing American workers and citizens in the back for his entire public life. He was a prototypical wheeler-dealer driven by self-preservation, not by principle. His political wisdom was of the wet-finger-in-the-wind variety, claiming a Reagan conservative mantle during election cycles and then throwing constitutional conservatives under the bus once comfortably back in his well-worn Senate committee seats.

Hatch preached “civility” for all his liberal Democrat Senate buddies but attacked grassroots Tea Party conservatives as “nuts.” Collegiality only applies to the wealthy and powerful.

To wit: Hillary Clinton paid tribute to Hatch by praising his “willingness to find common ground.” She reminisced about how “When I was first lady, he worked with me and Ted Kennedy to get SCHIP done; as a fellow Senate colleague, he reached across the aisle to serve Utah and the country.” As I’ve long documented, Hatch became the alcoholic Chappaquiddick swimmer’s best Beltway barnacle pal during his 42-year tenure in Washington. Their State Children’s Health Insurance Program monstrosity was a health care Trojan Horse for Obamacare that is now a $20 billion-a-year entitlement.

Twenty years ago, Hatch and Kennedy were also original open-borders co-sponsors of the illegal alien amnesty for millions of border-crossing invaders known as the “DREAM Act.” Hatch and Kennedy then teamed up to create the $6 billion national service GIVE/SERVE boondoggle in 2009, which quickly evolved into a slush fund for endless progressive social justice pet projects and Obama pals. In the name of “bipartisanship,” Hatch backed the nominations of Obama tax-cheat Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and scandal-plagued, Constitution-sabotaging Attorney General Eric Holder.