Sometimes the people you argue with give you a gift and make claims so laughable that they almost seem like intentional soft-balls served up to give you an opportunity to whack them out of the park. Recently a few people have attacked Orrin Hatch on the basis of his votes to confirm/block members of the Supreme Court and White House positions. Keep in mind these people are supposed to be conservatives, therefore they are saying Hatch’s position is not conservative enough.
The top-five most conservative justices in Supreme Court history are, in order, Clarence Thomas, William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia, John Roberts and Samuel Alito.
Clarence Thomas has personally cited Orrin Hatch as having played a “massive role” in getting him appointed to the court. Hatch didn’t just vote for the most conservative Justice the court has ever seen, but he personally went into battle for Justice Thomas and secured the nomination despite a coordinated resistance.
William Rehnquist is the second most conservative justice in history, and once again Rehnquist faced troubles during his confirmation. But again, and fortunately for all of us, Orrin Hatch personally defended a conservative nominee and helped see him confirmed to the court.
Hatch took a spot-light position on getting the two most conservative supreme court justices confirmed, and he voted for and supported the other three in the top five.
Despite this overwhelmingly conservative scorecard detractors point to Stephen Breyer as evidence that Hatch is not conservative enough. This is absurd. Hatch was working with Clinton during this time, and obviously Ol’ Bill wasn’t going to offer up any conservative options for the Supreme Court. In Fact, Bill’s first inclination was to appoint the more liberal and controversial Bruce Babbitt.
Hatch’s clout was such that he didn’t even have to try and fight a Babbitt appointment, all it took was him telling Clinton there was no way congress would approve such a liberal choice, so instead he recommended Breyer as an alternative people could live with. So we see Hatch blocking a super liberal nominee and getting a liberal president to compromise on someone more moderate based on one conversation and somehow this is supposed to be seen as a negative? Heaven forbid we support a Senator who fights opposition to get conservative justices appointed under conservative presidents but then is still able to influence liberal presidents toward a lesser of two evils option.
Hatch opponents must be really grasping at straws these days if this is the best they can do.