Sarah Palin thinks there's room in the tea party for Sen. Orrin Hatch.
Palin, former Alaska governor and 2008 vice presidential candidate, spoke about Hatch during an interview with Greta Van Susteren on Fox News.
"To your particular point about Senator Orrin Hatch, he is doing good in terms of trying to get a balanced budget and he has been for the last couple of decades," Palin said. "He has pushed hard for some fiscal reforms that we have got to see implemented. … We need to be agreeing and embracing his idea and working with him to make sure that that happens instead of shooing him away and shooing him out of a tea party movement."
Hatch's response, issued via press release Friday: "I am grateful for the support of Sarah Palin as I continue to lead this fight. Mrs. Palin is highly respected by Utahns and the national conservative movement and I appreciate her influence to create a united front in confronting the issue of our national debt. It is an honor to have Sarah Palin's backing for the balanced budget amendment and I will continue to use my time in the Senate to see it passed."
Earlier Thursday, Van Susteren penned a blog post questioning the wisdom of tea-party efforts in Utah to undermine Hatch's candidacy for re-election in 2012.
"I have been watching with curiosity the articles about efforts by an aggressive few tea party activists within the Utah Republican Party to unseat Sen. Orrin Hatch in the next election," Van Susteren wrote. "I have also noted that they are getting some out-of-state backup to unseat him. I am always curious when there is external influence and when there are internal efforts within a party to get rid of someone with enormous power for that party and, more importantly, for that state."
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