UTAH: Leading Newspaper Calls On GOP Sen. Orrin Hatch To Retire Over His “Utter Lack Of Integrity”

From the editorial board of the Salt Lake Tribune:

The selection of Sen. Orrin G. Hatch as the 2017 Utahn of the Year has little to do with the fact that, after 42 years, he is the longest-serving Republican senator in U.S. history, that he has been a senator from Utah longer than three-fifths of the state’s population has been alive.

It has everything to do with recognizing: Hatch’s part in the dramatic dismantling of the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, his role as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee in passing a major overhaul of the nation’s tax code, and his utter lack of integrity that rises from his unquenchable thirst for power.

It would be good for Utah if Hatch, having finally caught the Great White Whale of tax reform, were to call it a career. If he doesn’t, the voters should end it for him.

Common is the repetition of the catchphrase that Hatch successfully used to push aside three-term Sen. Frank Moss in this first election in, egad, 1976. “What do you call a senator who’s served in office for 18 years? You call him home.”