Hatch Takes Tea Party Heat

POLITICO reports:

Despite his overtures to the tea party movement this year, the longest-serving Republican in the Senate, Orrin Hatch of Utah, still hasn’t won over voters like Darcy Van Orden, who hasn’t forgotten his moderate past and wants the National Republican Senatorial Committee to pull its support for him in 2012.

Van Orden joined about 20 Utahns and a couple dozen more activists in front of the NRSC headquarters on Monday, in a protest organized by FreedomWorks, a Washington-based tea party organizing group.

“It’s time for him to go home and retire,” said Van Orden, who is from Davis County, Utah. “Isn’t 36 years enough? He truly hasn’t been a proponent of liberty.”

Tea party activists say the six-term senator’s record is too liberal: He’s voted to raise the debt ceiling; he helped create the State Children’s Health Insurance Program; and he was an original co-sponsor of the immigration reform bill, the DREAM Act.

The boisterous crowd waved signs that read “Down the Hatch,” “Retire Hatch” and “Hatching a new candidate in 2012.