In so doing, and in retrospect, I didn't give Hatch the credit he deserves for standing up to Bush, fellow conservatives and congressional leaders of his party when he thinks they are wrong. He has even championed causes that the right-wingers in his party, including Bush, would harpoon as a path to socialism. But Hatch's credentials as a pro-capitalist conservative are too strong to give those claims any weight.

Hatch's latest foray into "liberalism," as his foes would call it, is his stand against Bush on the CHIP program that uses cigarette taxes to provide health insurance for children of the working poor. Last week, Bush vetoed a Democrat-led bill to expand the number of children in the federal-state program by about 4 million.

Hatch, normally a Republican Party and Bush administration loyalist, not only is one of the leading voices pushing for an override of Bush's veto, his office has distributed "talking points" that not so subtly imply that the White House has been deceitful in its arguments against CHIP.

This is not the first time the usually partisan Hatch has bucked his party's leaders on an issue he feels passionate about. After all, he worked 10 years ago with the liberal Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., a favorite boogeyman of Utah Republicans, to get the original CHIP bill passed. By all measures, the program has been a success.

He also teamed with Kennedy - whose picture these days adorns pro-voucher ads as the supposedly evil force behind the anti-voucher movement - to pass a bill protecting religious groups from discrimination by institutions that receive federal funds.

Hatch also joined liberal Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., on legislation that provides grants to states to assist low-income families with child care. When he first aligned with Dodd, Hatch was the lone Republican open to the idea.

Hatch formed an alliance in 1984 with California Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman to pass the "Drug Price Competition and Patent Restoration Act," which created today's generic drug industry and made affordable drugs more readily available to elderly people on fixed incomes.

In 1990 he joined with the late Rep. Wayne Owens, D-Utah, to pass the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act that has provided more than $1 billion in compensation to Utah "Downwinders" for injuries and disease caused by radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons testing in the 1950s.

In 2001, Hatch became the leading pro-life Republican advocate for stem-cell research, which scientists hope can lead to cures for many debilitating diseases. His staunch support for the research hasn't flagged, despite two vetoes of the legislation by Bush and strong opposition from the GOP's Christian-conservative base.

Hatch sponsored the original DREAM Act bill when he was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and last week became a co-sponsor of Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin's DREAM Act amendment to the Defense authorization bill. The act allows qualified children of undocumented workers to pay in-state college tuition, which raises the hackles of many in his conservative base.

Now he is working with several Democrats on legislation to give tax incentives to businesses for research and to consumers who buy fuel-efficient hybrid cars.

Hatch is undoubtedly a partisan senator, make no mistake. But unlike many of the lemmings in his party who will blindly follow their leaders off a cliff, he has his independent side, and he shows it from time to time.