McEntee: Orrin Hatch embraces the far right — but will it work?

This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

U.S. Sen. Mike Lee is hedging his bets — he won't be endorsing Orrin Hatch in his run for a seventh term as Utah's senior senator until after the 2012 Utah GOP convention.

Given that Lee, along with Sen. Rand Paul and Rep. Michele Bachmann, is a tea party darling, that could spell adios for Hatch when party zealots take up their brooms again.

Hatch did, after all, support Bob Bennett, who was swept out last June when Lee and Tim Bridgewater were sent along to the primary election.

But since then, Hatch has done everything he can to make himself palatable to the tea party in general and to capital-letter entities such as the Tea Party Express and the Tea Party Caucus.

"I love the tea party!" he exclaimed in an exuberant moment a few months ago. This from a guy who worked with Ted Kennedy to establish the vital Children's Health Insurance Program.

Just last week, Hatch either was invited to or crashed a tea party convention in Washington. He got a tepid hello from some, but Lee, Paul and Bachmann took him to their political bosoms.

With typical modesty, Hatch said the more tea party types looked at him, the more they'd realize, "How do you get somebody as good as he [Hatch] is?"

Still, a lot can happen between now and 2012. Political movements tend to flash like fireworks, then fade. Remember 1996, Ross Perot and the Reform Party?

Hatch has long been the favorite of mainstream Utah Republicans. But we learned last June that in Utah's system of caucus and convention, a nascent movement can sweep up the hyper-conservative element.

For example, in an April 2010 Tribune poll, 39 percent of Utah Republican voters favored Bennett as the GOP candidate, while 20 percent would have voted for Lee. Just FYI, 73 percent of those voters would have voted for Mitt Romney for president.

But in a poll of delegates to the state GOP convention, 37 percent liked Lee, 20 percent favored Bridgewater and only 16 percent named Bennett as their first choice.

After being knocked out, the three-term incumbent teared up when he talked to reporters, then leavened the moment, saying he "tears up at parking lot dedications." Then he got busy. He's set up a lobbying firm in Washington, D.C., works with a law firm and is a resident scholar at the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics.

Meanwhile, Rep. Jason Chaffetz has been hinting all over the place that he might run for the Senate in 2012, which really ought to give Hatch the heebie-jeebies. The 3rd District Republican, recently scolded for disrupting House decorum by sleeping in his office, could pose a serious threat.

So Hatch, who famously said in 1976 that his first opponent, Sen. Ted Moss, had stayed too long at the fair, could be 86ed off of the midway, too.

Wonder what he'd be up to in 2013?

Peg McEntee is a news columnist. Reach her at pegmcentee@sltrib.com.