Orrin Grant Hatch (March 22, 1934 – April 23, 2022)

April 24, 2022 10:30 AM

Orrin Hatch, the longest-serving Republican senator in U.S. history, dies at 88 [Deseret News ]

“He was a tough partisan, a solid conservative, but he could make strategic alliances to get legislation passed,” former Senate historian Donald Ritchie said in an interview. “No one questioned his ideology, so he could deal. People on his side of the aisle trusted him, and people on the other side respected him.” [Washington Post]

"Orrin Hatch On Skis" - Frank Zappa [Youtube]

posted by riruro (46 comments total)

Ok
posted by Going To Maine at 10:41 AM on April 24, 2022 [14 favorites]

*
posted by SansPoint at 10:41 AM on April 24, 2022 [4 favorites]

They don't make too many like him anymore; a pragmatic partisan. Now, they're all just partisans.
A gentleman conservative ideologue is still a conservative ideologue.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 10:46 AM on April 24, 2022 [7 favorites]

Erik Loomis, LGM: Hatch

Almost every position taken by Hatch was horrible. He was the author of the vile Hatch Amendment, his idea for a constitutional amendment reading, “A right to abortion is not secured by this Constitution. The Congress and the several States shall have the concurrent power to restrict and prohibit abortions: Provided, That a law of a State which is more restrictive than a law of Congress shall govern.” Hatch also was obsessed with a balanced budget, that hobgoblin of our dumbest elites, and sponsored the Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution on several occasions.

To his credit, Hatch did work closely with Ted Kennedy on a number of issues, the kind of bipartisanship that made Beltway reporters swoon. That included working together on creating State Children’s Health Insurance Program in 1997. And you know what, sure, he deserves credit for that. Good for him. It’s not a perfect program but at least he did something positive with his life. It got to the point that the National Review even called him a liberal. That was ridiculous, but still. That also increasingly disappeared as he got older, to the sadness of writers such as Michael Tomasky, who lamented the decline of bipartisanship this represented.

[...]

On gay rights, Hatch was as bad as one could possibly imagine, though he did moderate on this over time. In a 1977 speech at the University of Utah, Hatch stated, “I wouldn’t want to see homosexuals teaching school anymore than I’d want to see members of the American Nazi Party teaching school.” Ron DeSantis, asks, well wait minute there on the American Nazi Party…Of course, you could hear plenty of Democrats saying the same thing at the time and Hatch was a huge supporter of the Defense of Marriage Act. Later in his career, he did move enough on this issue to vote for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would have barred employers from being able to fire workers based upon their sexual orientation. So I guess it serves to show that you work hard enough and maybe you can move the worst politicians to be slightly less bad, especially after you lay the groundwork for your party to become a cesspool of coup leaders and fascists. A lesson there, of sorts.

[...]

Hatch finally decided to not run for reelection in 2018. I doubt he would have lost a primary challenge that year, not after embracing Donald Trump so closely. He had only been in the Senate for a mere 42 years, which at the time was the longest serving Republican in Senate history, though Chuck Grassley later passed him. For all his work in making the nation worse, Donald Trump presented Hatch with the Presidential Medal of Freedom that year.

Orrin Hatch is now dead. The nation is worse for his life. But hey, at least he had the respect of Donald Trump. What more could he want?

posted by tonycpsu at 10:50 AM on April 24, 2022 [65 favorites]

Yes, he got things done…
posted by darkstar at 10:51 AM on April 24, 2022

Orrin Hatch and the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act: Pandora’s Box Revisited

Products of unknown safety and efficacy were once referred to as "quackery," and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was empowered to protect public health by preventing their sale and forcing them from the market. However, in 1994, the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act legitimized their sale as "dietary supplements." Sales increased dramatically, and many Americans now use herbals, homeopathics, and other so-called supplements. The Food and Drug Administration cannot act against them until patients have already been harmed, a dangerous situation. Furthermore, no governmental agency has the authority to force the manufacturers to furnish proof of efficacy.

[...]

Their champion was Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, who championed The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA).
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 10:52 AM on April 24, 2022 [27 favorites]

Born the son of a carpenter and plaster lather, he overcame the poverty of his youth to become a United States senator

I know "lather" can also mean "one who lathes," but that deseret.com obit has me really enjoying the image of Hatch emerging from the womb, a writhing mass of tiny plaster bubbles, already plotting how to put a stop to the homosexual agenda.
posted by Mayor West at 10:58 AM on April 24, 2022 [18 favorites]

In interviews and his statements during both rounds of hearings, Orrin Hatch made it clear he just didn't care about the testimony of Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford because Thomas and Kavanaugh are "good men". Truth never figured into it for the "gentleman" who was so dedicated to his Mormon faith that he worked hard to put two sex offenders on the Supreme Court.
posted by hydropsyche at 11:00 AM on April 24, 2022 [20 favorites]

Looks like Strom Thurmond spent 49 years in the senate, but they put the "republican" qualifier for Hatch because Thurmond switched parties. Also Grassley, so "at the time" is relevant. Guess it was hard to come up with a positive superlative for this guy.
posted by ishmael at 11:19 AM on April 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

He was old school, that is, he actually did his job. Today it's all about getting attention on social media so you can fund raise.
posted by Bee'sWing at 11:22 AM on April 24, 2022

Orrin Hatch (1977):

I wouldn't want to see homosexuals teaching school anymore than I'd want to see members of the American Nazi Party teaching school.

Also Orrin Hatch (2018):

No one should ever feel less because of their gender identity or sexual orientation. LGBT youth deserve our unwavering love and support. They deserve our validation and the assurance that not only is there a place for them in this society, but that it is far better off because of them. These young people need us—and we desperately need them.

I appreciate the change but it's hard for me to forgive the first. Here's the Advocate's take on Hatch and LGBT issues from 2018.
posted by Nelson at 11:32 AM on April 24, 2022 [9 favorites]

I'm genuinely surprised by some of Orrin Hatch's actions in his later years, such as his evolution on LGBT rights and his defense of the religious freedoms of people wanting to build a mosque.

Or maybe I'm surprised by the fact that it's a surprise. It's hard to imagine hardline Republicans these days doing similar.

That's not to say I have much respect for Hatch, or that I think he made up for the hateful and damaging actions he took. He made the country worse in many ways. It's just that Hatch was one of the big bad ones when I was growing up, and yet he turned out to be more multifaceted than the radical partisanship of current hardline Republicans will allow.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 12:00 PM on April 24, 2022 [5 favorites]

It’s easy to say nice things on the way out the door.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 12:04 PM on April 24, 2022 [8 favorites]

At the end, maybe he respected gays and still hated Nazis, but he helped create a party that loudly preaches the reverse. *
posted by rikschell at 12:06 PM on April 24, 2022 [21 favorites]

*
posted by OHenryPacey at 12:09 PM on April 24, 2022 [1 favorite]

I recently learned that he wrote a song about Hanukkah.
posted by box at 12:23 PM on April 24, 2022

I'm genuinely surprised by some of Orrin Hatch's actions in his later years, such as his evolution on LGBT rights and his defense of the religious freedoms of people wanting to build a mosque.

I know nothing about him specifically, but generically I'm not surprised that his views changed over time. People often get more liberal as they get older. It's just that they don't move as far as society moves. So, I wouldn't award him a prize for this, just that it would be a normal amount of change for a normal person (ie non-politician).
posted by plonkee at 12:30 PM on April 24, 2022 [1 favorite]

People do change.
posted by amtho at 12:34 PM on April 24, 2022

He helped midwife the modern Republican party. Unlike the Trumps, Gaetzes, Taylor-Greens, and their ilk, I believe he had principles, but those principles were rooted in an ideology that elevated injustice and inhumanity, celebrated domination and division, and venerated ignorance and hypocrisy. His own bad ideology blinded him, like so many of his fellow conservatives, to the nihilism of those he welcomed and supported.

I don't know whether the solipsistic nihilists or the self-righteous pharisees are worse, but Hatch was part of a movement that inflicted, and continues to inflict, both upon all of us. The world is worse for the work that he chose to do with his life.
posted by biogeo at 12:36 PM on April 24, 2022 [24 favorites]

So, I wouldn't award him a prize for this, just that it would be a normal amount of change for a normal person (ie non-politician).

I wouldn't either; I was just remarking on the ever-increasing radicalization of Republican party, such that Orrin Hatch now seems less radical in comparison, just because he evolved a more human position or principled view on one or two issues out of many.

For the record, he was terrible - the type of name I'd see in the news and immediately wonder what hateful, backwards thing he'd said or done.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 12:54 PM on April 24, 2022 [10 favorites]

Gentle reminder that using pharisee as an insult is an antisemitic slur
posted by hydropsyche at 1:00 PM on April 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

Eh, fuck this guy in particular.

I hope he goes to his Mormon heaven and meets Jesus only to discover to discover that Jesus is very gay and brown just before being cast down into outer darkness.
posted by loquacious at 1:34 PM on April 24, 2022 [7 favorites]

Good riddance to yet another right wing chicken-fucker who is extremely lucky that hell doesn't exist.
posted by ivanthenotsoterrible at 1:53 PM on April 24, 2022 [4 favorites]

Yeah, “at least he was seemly” does not, to my mind, actually mitigate his awfulness.
posted by sgranade at 3:10 PM on April 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

He dead?
Did he take anyone with him (Madison Cawthorn, Lauren Boebert)?
Selfish Prick.
posted by evilDoug at 3:18 PM on April 24, 2022 [4 favorites]

I hope he was right about there being a Hell.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 3:46 PM on April 24, 2022 [3 favorites]

Thanks for the heads up, hydropsyche, I never knew that. Ironic considering how much better the shoe fits on today's political Christianists.
posted by biogeo at 3:55 PM on April 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

About the only good thing I can say about Orrin Hatch is that he convinced Ted Kennedy to get sober and clean up his life.
posted by briank at 3:59 PM on April 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

Good, good
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:24 PM on April 24, 2022

My very first political memory was turning on c-span as a child and watching Hatch question Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas about the plot of Long Dong Silver
posted by Jon_Evil at 5:35 PM on April 24, 2022 [1 favorite]

Orrin Hatch Was Never a ‘Public Servant’

(An article on his retirement, but works as an obit too.)
posted by TedW at 7:54 PM on April 24, 2022

I first saw Orrin Hatch, dressed in levis and a chambray shirt, at an SDS meeting in Federal Heights, October 1969. It was at the bome of Zanne Devereaux, I was there looking for the ALCU attorney who was taking my case. I didn't go for the SDS meeting. But at the time Devereaux showed me copies of Soviet Life magazine, and asked me if I would like to work for Russia. I said no, Russia would not let me air my grievances with them, if I had any, but the US would. At the time I was an anti Vietnam war activist, of about one week. Hatch hung around in that denim drag, until they put him in a suit, and ran him for office. He came and went from the health food store where I worked for at least 1971, and into 1972.
posted by Oyéah at 8:13 PM on April 24, 2022 [6 favorites]

Since it's the season, the thing in my head is the song Dayenu, from the Seder. The refrain is a loving song saying "If god had only done (X), it would have been enough" and here I am thinking about Hatch, except it's more:

If he had only been responsible for the Hatch Act, it would have been enough to cement him as a person who objectively made people's lives worse.

If you can get three or four verses out of that, if you can keep pointing to various parts of their body of work, and still be like "even *this* was enough to define them for all time" then maybe, just maybe, you're talking about a terrible person who we're better off without. That maybe, just maybe, the count is lower compared to the people who have taken the reigns in his party does not make him any less responsible for the damage he caused.
posted by Ghidorah at 8:26 PM on April 24, 2022 [2 favorites]

WRT his quote-endquote "evolution" on LGBT issues, remember that, after the GOP won re-election for W in 2004 in part by using the possibility of legalization of same-sex marriage as a wedge issue (kind of like how they're using trans issues right now), and it seemed clear that society in general was moving in the opposite direction, suddenly the GOP seemed real interested in courting gay and lesbian votes and cash; Ken Mehlman, who literally helped W get re-elected in '04 by opposing SSM, came out of the closet and in favor of SSM. Lots of others on the right suddenly saw the rainbow light (while at the same time insisting that it was totes OK for homophobes to deny services to LGBTs if they wanted). And, of course, Lee Atwater also pled for that sort of one-foot-in-the-grave takeback.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:41 PM on April 24, 2022 [4 favorites]

Outlived another one.

Excellent.
posted by flabdablet at 9:38 PM on April 24, 2022 [8 favorites]

Sometimes bad things happen to bad people and we're allowed to feel good about it.

He hurt a lot of people. I'm glad he can't hurt anybody anymore.
posted by AlSweigart at 9:47 PM on April 24, 2022 [3 favorites]

We need to up the processing rate on this kind of thing, it’s taking far too long between events. At this rate we’ll never be clear of them.

See if good ol’ Beelz down in dev ops can get us more nodes on our cluster, maybe we can close out a few more before lunch.
posted by aramaic at 9:50 PM on April 24, 2022

the latest installment in "if you don't want anyone to speak ill of you after you die, maybe don't live in a way that makes people want to"
posted by DoctorFedora at 12:26 AM on April 25, 2022 [13 favorites]

Man, I didn’t know about his work on behalf of quackery, er, the dietary supplement industry. That alone consigns him to the black book in my mind.
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 5:36 AM on April 25, 2022 [1 favorite]

And nothing of value was lost.

He did great evil with his power, the world is better for his absence than it ever was for his presence.
posted by sotonohito at 9:18 AM on April 25, 2022 [1 favorite]

Orrin Hatch was below replacement value as a human being for his entire political career, based on harm done over time. The fact that he got fractionally less bad about a few things by the end doesn't mitigate that. The world would almost certainly have been better off had someone picked randomly from a phone book served his terms in the Senate, instead of him.

That these simple truths are not universally recognized (are, indeed, universally unrecognized, by those who have megaphones loud enough to be heard) at the occasion of his passing, says everything one needs to know about the trustworthiness of those doing the recognizing.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 9:46 AM on April 25, 2022

The saddest thing about Orrin is that, even if you quantify his wrongdoings as a form of accomplishment, he wasn't even among the foremost at that. He was an odious toad, but compared to some of his contemporaries in the Senate, he was just along for (or, rather, to actively obstruct) the ride.

And if he had still been in the Senate today, that's exactly what he would have been doing to the end -- putting a gentlemanly, civilized veneer on the process of preventing anything good from happening to anyone of whom he did not personally approve.

He wasn't Jesse Helms. But he was close enough to Jesse not to mourn.
posted by delfin at 10:52 AM on April 25, 2022 [1 favorite]

Fuck. This. Guy.

May 2010: Senator Orrin Hatch said "he would help moderate jurist Merrick Garland win Senate confirmation if President Barack Obama nominated him to the U.S. Supreme Court."

Asked if Garland would win Senate confirmation with bipartisan support, Hatch told Reuters, “No question.”

“I have no doubts that Garland would get a lot of (Senate) votes. And I will do my best to help him get them,” added Hatch, a former Judiciary Committee chairman.

May 2016: Hatch repeats: No hearings for Garland before election.

He also wrote an op-ed where he lied about having met Garland after Obama nominated Garland.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:32 AM on April 25, 2022 [2 favorites]

*
posted by Ber at 12:55 PM on April 25, 2022

*

mortuis nihil nisi bonum

Hatch is dead.
Good.

There, I said it.
posted by BlueHorse at 7:01 PM on April 25, 2022

That maybe, just maybe, the count is lower compared to the people who have taken the reigns in his party does not make him any less responsible for the damage he caused.

No one has suggested that, at least not in this thread.

The fact that he got fractionally less bad about a few things by the end doesn't mitigate that.

This either.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 6:12 AM on April 26, 2022