SALON

Friday, Apr 29, 2011 9:54 PM UTC

How far will Orrin Hatch go to survive?

A section of the Utah Republican's website is scrubbed after Salon points out his birther-unfriendly past

By

Topics: Republican Party, War Room,

How far will Orrin Hatch go to survive?

Around noon yesterday, I posted a piece looking back at Sen. Orrin Hatch’s sponsorship of a 2003 measure to allow foreign-born citizens to run for president. Less than 24 hours after the piece went up, a tech blogger discovered that the section of Hatch’s website that mentioned the “Presidential Eligibility Amendment” had mysteriously disappeared.

I noted in my piece yesterday that the archives of Hatch’s website still included a section about the amendment, which at the time was seen as targeting Austrian-born Arnold Schwarzenegger. I also asked Hatch’s press office if the senator still supports the measure, which would likely raise the ire of birthers — a significant chunk of the GOP base. Alienating these voters would be problematic for Hatch because he is trying to fend off a potential Tea Party challenge in deeply conservative Utah.

I never heard back from Hatch’s office about his position. But this morning the blogger Lauren Weinstein noticed that the section of Hatch’s website that detailed the constitutional amendment is now blank.

Hatch’s office told Politico that this was a coincidence:

We have a brand new website — took us a long time to get it up and running and it still isn’t completely done, even though it’s up live. Since we had so much material that we were transferring over, we made an internal decision that we had to have a cutoff date to the material that we posted. … There was never and will never be any attempt to shy away from Sen. Hatch’s record — this was an instance of try to manage a huge amount of information in a systematic manner and so we therefore chose 2008 as the cutoff date for all materials we are posting to his website.

Indeed, the design of Hatch’s website looks the exact same as it did yesterday. The only thing that has changed is that the archive of Hatch’s bills now ends at 2008. Everything before that, including the 2003 Presidential Eligibility Amendment, is gone.

Whether or not this was a coincidence, Hatch has been furiously tacking to the right in recent months. In February the usually mild-mannered senator slammed “Obamacare” as “a dumb-ass program.” Then, earlier this month, he fired off a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder demanding prosecutions of porn producers.

In any case, I’ve also asked the office of Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, a potential Hatch challenger, if he supports allowing foreign-born citizens to run for president. I’ll update this post if I hear back from either Chaffetz or Hatch on the issue.

Justin Elliott is a reporter for ProPublica. You can follow him on Twitter @ElliottJustin More Justin Elliott.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 19 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Loaded terminology like "entitlements" and "welfare" skews the debate and alters America. How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government.
350 points351 points | 114 comments
vote
How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government -- "...much of the U.S. economic security support system consists of subsidies for the affluent in the form of tax breaks, like those for private retirement savings plans such as 401(k)s and private employer-provided health insurance."
63 points64 points | 3 comments
vote
Temple Grandin on DSM-5: “Sounds like diagnosis by committee.” When it comes to autism, Grandin argues we're paying too much attention to labels -- and not enough to individuals
35 points36 points | 2 comments
vote
Doug Henwood: Capitalism Thrives on Class Exploitation
34 points35 points | 4 comments
vote
Temple Grandin on DSM-5: “Sounds like diagnosis by committee.” When it comes to autism, Grandin argues we're paying too much attention to labels -- and not enough to individuals
36 points37 points | 3 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations