If Friday’s news report is to be believed, Senator Orrin Hatch’s desultory “maybe I will/maybe I won’t” decision to retire from his role as a so-called public servant may have finally been made after having secured his place in the GOP record books as the longest-serving Senator in Republican history.
According to some of his closest allies in Utah, Hatch will retire at the end of his current term, although Dave Hansen, a spokesman for Hatch, says the senator is focused on doing his job in the senate—why start now?—and won’t be making any decisions about 2018 until the end of this year.
While I have my fingers and toes crossed that Hatch will indeed ride off into the Utah sunset—a sentiment shared by 75 percent of Utahns according to a recent Salt Lake Tribune poll—there is every likelihood that Hatch’s replacement will be just as bad, if not worse, than he has been. Because waiting in the GOP-establishment wings is none other than the 2012 Republican nominee for president and former governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, a plan that has been percolating behind the scenes for some time.
As I wrote in September, the last time the rumor of a Hatch/Romney switcheroo was making the rounds, this highly likely scenario is bad news for conservatives and “badder” news for America due to Romney’s long track record of talking conservative while walking liberal.
Despite his 2012 claim of being “severely conservative,” Mitt’s history in Massachusetts—first as a US Senate candidate and later as Governor—was heavily influenced by Ted Kennedy on issues like healthcare and abortion. Which, when you think about it, makes Romney the perfect candidate to represent the GOP . . . but I digress.
As we’ve already witnessed in Arizona and Nevada, the evolution of the GOP into the Trumplican party is turning the nomination process into a choice between RINO’s and Trumplicans. Utah will be no exception once Steve Bannon gets involved, which is all but guaranteed when you consider that he already planned to primary Hatch, and that Romney was a frequent critic of Donald Trump during the 2016 GOP primaries.
Meanwhile, I’m still left wondering how the state that elected Senator Mike Lee can do no better than this.
David Leach is the owner of The Strident Conservative, your source for opinion that’s politically-incorrect and always “right.” His articles can also be found on RedState.com.
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