What is going on with Hatch? Hopefully, we will know soon. "The Hill"
February 18, 2004
GOP senators circle wagons round Hatch
Top conservatives tell their ideological allies to hold fire
By Alexander Bolton
Three top Senate conservatives have told GOP conservative groups to lay off Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), who helped trigger a controversial investigation into leaked Democratic Judiciary Committee documents.
Senate Republican Policy Committee Chairman Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), both members of the Judiciary panel, personally delivered that message to a group of nearly 20 conservative leaders last week. Senate Republican Conference Chairman Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) also briefly attended the meeting on Capitol Hill.
The 90-minute session grew heated at times, as the visiting conservative leaders repeatedly interrupted the senators and questioned their handling of the memo controversy.
But the senators, who received last week a closed-door briefing on the investigation from Senate Sergeant at Arms Bill Pickle, warned conservatives they might come to regret their position when the results of the probe are fully known. Pickle is expected to finish his investigation by March 5.
The senators also asked them to suspend their strong statements in favor of Manuel Miranda, the GOP leadership aide who has admitted to reading the leaked files.
Speaking of Hatch, who chairs the Judiciary panel, Richard Lessner, executive director of the American Conservative Union, said: “He’s a senior senator and been there for a long time.” Lessner, however, declined to comment on the specifics of the meeting. “I suppose they want to protect him from the criticism he’s receiving from conservatives,” he said.
It appears, however, that the message hasn’t fully taken hold.
“When conservatives bring up the same questions regarding the judicial nominees, it doesn’t seem Orrin Hatch is on our side to get the ball rolling,” said David Almasi of the American Criminal Justice Center, referring to allegations that the Democrats linked the progress of judicial nominees to campaign contributions.
Many conservative activists have viewed Hatch suspiciously since the days of the Clinton administration when, they charge, he allowed many liberal Democratic judicial nominees to clear the committee vetting process with less-than-strenuous opposition.
After a brief thaw, relations have turned sour in recent months as conservatives from Rush Limbaugh to Paul Weyrich, head of the conservative Free Congress Foundation, have lambasted Hatch’s handling of the investigation, which they claim has diverted attention from what conservatives see as a pattern of Democratic corruption.
For example, Weyrich told The Washington Post that Hatch has a “congenital need to be loved by the opposition,” and opined to the Associated Press that Sen. Patrick Leahy (Vt.), the top Democrat on Judiciary, is “10 times tougher than Hatch.”
Rather than reconciling the conservatives with Hatch, the efforts by Kyl, Sessions and other senators have only produced a growing sense of bafflement.
“It makes no sense,” said one conservative who attended the meeting and asked not to be identified.
Conservatives wonder why Senate Republicans are adopting a defensive posture when the leaked documents indicate Democrats slowed the confirmation of a nominee to the 6th U.S. Court of Appeals to affect that court’s ruling on a key affirmative action case.
The documents also revealed that Democrats opposed the nomination of Miguel Estrada to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in part because he was Hispanic, and therefore presumably would be tougher to block should President Bush decide to nominate him to a future vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Conservative groups, such as Coalition for a Fair Judiciary, the Free Congress Foundation and the American Criminal Justice Center, have served as key allies to Senate Republicans, helping turn the battle over Bush’s judicial nominees from an inside-the-Beltway fencing match into a major campaign issue.
Republicans note that in the 2002 election, their margin of victory in three battlefield states, Georgia, Missouri, and Minnesota, was smaller than the number of single-issue pro-life voters who cast ballots in those states. Since the makeup of the judiciary is of high priority to such voters, some Republicans argue that growing public awareness of the Senate battle over judges helped mobilize these voters.
But the influence and communication abilities of those groups — an asset in 2002 — could turn into a liability in 2004 if conservatives continue to voice their dissatisfaction with the Republican Senate on the judges issue.
Many conservatives are incensed that Hatch helped oust Miranda, a top aide to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) on judicial issues. Conservatives take issue with the decision to push Miranda out of the Senate even before Pickle completed his report.
“I don’t think [Hatch] is as committed to achieving success for our side as the Democrats are to seeing their side prevail,” said Lessner. “Senator Hatch’s first instinct was not to defend our side but to throw our side overboard.”
However, conservatives make clear they don’t oppose the Pickle investigation itself. Instead, they are angry that Republicans let it take the focus off what in their eyes is the real problem: the influence liberal interest groups exercise over Democratic decisions to block controversial Bush nominees.
In an interview with the Associated Press last week, Pickle said there was “no doubt” GOP aides acted improperly in accessing Democratic issues.
What is unclear is whether GOP aides hacked into Democratic files on the Judiciary server. |
