Before Vote, Republicans Make Moves to the Right

By JONATHAN WEISMAN
NYT

WASHINGTON — As Senator Orrin G. Hatch looked on in May 2010, delegates to Utah’s Republican convention booted out Robert F. Bennett, his three-term Senate colleague and Republican mainstay, chanting “TARP, TARP, TARP” to make clear that Mr. Bennett was being punished for backing the Wall Street bailout that both Utah senators had supported.

Ever since, Utah’s senior senator has been working to make sure his quest for a seventh term this year does not meet the same fate. As a result, Mr. Hatch’s voting record has shifted decidedly rightward. After receiving an 88 percent rating from the Club for Growth political action committee in 2009, he jumped to 100 percent in 2010 and then 99 percent in 2011, far surpassing his lifetime score of 78 percent.

Election-year adjustments in a lawmaker’s voting pattern are common. But this election cycle is shaping up as unique. The pressure from the right flank of the Republican Party is intense, and unlike in 2010, party veterans this time around have had time to see it coming after the last primary season bumped off or nearly toppled so many of their colleagues.

Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana, has never had a re-election campaign like this one and has been preparing for it for more than a year, said Andy Fisher, a senior aide who has been with him since 1983. Likewise, Mr. Hatch is exercising political muscles that have atrophied for years in one of the most overwhelmingly Republican states in the nation.

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