Orrin Hatch gets buffeted in the merciless winds of Tea Party politics. Was he invited to tonight’s Tea Party townhall in DC, as he claims? Or did he show up uninvited, as the President of the Tea Party Express claims? Our reporter on the scene tries to get to the bottom of the situation.
To give some additional background, the gist seems to be that Hatch was the victim of infighting within Tea Party Express. The founder of Tea Party Express, Sal Russo, is a longtime GOP operative. And he’s recently come out in support of Hatch. He says Hatch was invited. But the actual president of the group does not seem down at all with the effort to Tea Partyize Orrin and seemed inclined to go out of her way to embarrass Hatch. Whether he was invited or just invited himself isn’t clear and is perhaps more of a semantic point. But it’s a heckuva position for a seventy-something six-term senator to find himself in.
