PERRspectives: The Hilariously Horrible Mr. Hatch
"So the debasement of the Party of Lincoln has come to this. While short-fingered Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump sought to reassure Americans by declaring "I guarantee there's no problem" with his schlong, his nearest GOP rival Ted Cruz (R-TX) nevertheless told all who would listen that "I have no desire to copulate with him." But it shouldn't have taken these two newcomers to make Republicans feel embarrassed by their party and its 2016 nominating process. After all, many of the party's longest-serving legislators in Washington and shooting stars in the states have been at the forefront of the GOP's perpetual campaign of disinformation, denialism and unprecedented obstructionism. And in recent years, Utah's senior Senator Orrin Hatch has been pathetically prominent. As a quick glance at his record shows, the 39-year Senate veteran is a fervent practitioner of the cartoonish nihilism that now passes as Republican orthodoxy. A supposed deficit hawk who has been advocating a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution since 1979, Hatch defended President Bush's unfunded $400 billion Medicare prescription drug plan because "it was standard practice not to pay for things." In 2010, Hatch promised a "holy war" to defeat the Obamacare bill he called unconstitutional despite having co-sponsored almost identical legislation in 1993 as an alternative to Bill Clinton's health care proposal. A supporter of stem cell research who voted to legalize the use of fetal tissue for that very purpose, Senator Hatch led the bogus Republican witch hunt into Planned Parenthood in 2015. A year ago, Hatch was one of 47 GOP Senators who signed a letter to the regime in Tehran warning Congress would block a nuclear deal despite his Iran-Contra defense of Ronald Reagan in which he proclaimed the President is the "the sole person to whom our Constitution gives the responsibility for conducting foreign relations"."
