Upon news of GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch's impending retirement, it's worth revisiting all the ways he truly summed up the Republican Party's—let's call them "image issues"—in 2017.
From having no idea what was in their own bills to blaming Democrats for the GOP entirely shutting them out of the legislative process to entirely missing the #MeToo movement sweeping the country, no GOP lawmaker proved more oblivious than Utah’s Orrin Hatch. Thankfully, some of his best moments were caught on video—here’s a sampling of them.
1) That time he didn't even know what was in the GOP healthcare repeal bill as he presided over a meeting on it as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.
2) That time he grew incredulous about the GOP's tax giveaway to the rich being characterized as a tax giveaway to the rich. "I come from the poor people," he declared, oozing privilege.
3) That time he claimed there's "no money" to fund the children's health insurance plan that covers some nine million kids while the GOP simultaneously rushed through their tax giveaway to the rich and major corporations.
Less than two days after the Senate passed widely criticized tax reform legislation, one of the tax bill’s key proponents came under fire for claiming there’s “no money” for a children’s health care plan he helped create. [...]
“The reason CHIP’s having trouble is because we don’t have money anymore,” Hatch said.
4) That time he couldn't explain why there were absolutely no hearings on the GOP's healthcare repeal bill that was coming to the Senate floor for a vote.
“Will we have a hearing on the health care proposal?” [Sen. Claire] McCaskill asked Hatch, concerned about Republican plans to fast-track the Senate’s version of the Obamacare repeal bill without Democratic involvement or public hearings. “Will we?”
“I think we’ve already had one,” Hatch replied.
“No, I mean on the proposal that you are planning to bring to the Senate floor for a vote? Will there be a hearing?” she pressed him again.
In fact, there would never be a hearing on that Trumpcare bill.
5) That time he defended Donald Trump as having "no choice" but to endorse sexual predator Roy Moore for Alabama’s Senate seat.
“I don’t think he had any choice but to do that,” Hatch said on the tarmac of Joint Base Andrews after alighting from the president’s plane. “He needs every Republican he can get, so he can put his agenda through. So that’s the only possible Republican you can get down there.”
Well, maybe if you're a serial sexual assaulter, you figure you have no choice. Yet even a decisive swath of Alabama’s Republican voters determined there was indeed a choice—and they ultimately made a different one.
Orrin Hatch, we will certainly miss your flamboyant mix of amnesia, oblivion and hypocrisy next year—no one did it better in 2017!
