On President Donald Trump’s election, David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, lamented, “This is an American tragedy.” My memory of Sen. Orrin Hatch’s election in 1976 is not quite as strident, but close to it.
Hatch’s John Birchish tactics after defeating Republican hopeful Jack Carlson and sitting Sen. Frank Moss mirrored the demagoguery of Trump. Hatch’s attacks on Carlson as told by his wife, Renee, in a book, and the radio debates I heard of Hatch and Moss, projected his image of self-serving and self-righteousness, which he manifests today. I doubt that Hatch agrees with the defiled moral character of Trump, but he’s right in line with the Trumpian politics.
Additionally, Hatch has burdened the public with his long-standing support for the alternative medicine industry that rips off the public with high prices for scientifically unproven quackery. (Big Pharma at least must sell drugs approved by the FDA while the Hatch-backed law called the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 does not require scientific proof of efficacy. As former FDA Commissioner David A. Kessler states: “Alternative medicine manufacturers [are allowed] to sell quack cures and herbal medicines freely.”) Hatch is responsible for this travesty.
In my eyes, Hatch is Trumpian without Trump’s moral personal stain. We Utahns are better off getting his replacement, whoever it is.
Richard H. Keller, Salt Lake City