Orrin Hatch: “before we adjourned for the recess, I came to this lectern to issue a call for comity, cooperation, and compromise. My…”

“before we adjourned for the recess, I came to this lectern to issue a call for comity, cooperation, and compromise. My message that day was simple: If we are serious about legislating--if we are truly committed to doing the work the American people sent us here to do--then we must look beyond the horizon of our differences and find common ground. Since January, this Congress has been its own worst enemy. It has been mired in the muck of its own making, bogged down by partisan squabbles and gripped by gridlock--the likes of which I have never seen in all my years of public service. I wish I could say the situation across the country is better, but sadly it isn't. The polarization we see in the Senate is only indicative of the division we see all around the Nation. The events of August threw that division into sharp relief, but it also showed us our ability to heal--our remarkable capacity to lay aside superficial differences in moments of crisis to come together as one. In Charlottesville and Houston, August brought us a tale of two cities--one that showed us at once both the weaknesses and strengths of our great country. In Charlottesville, we saw the worst of America on full display. In the violence, vitriol, and vulgar racism of Nazi demonstrators, we stared evil in the face, and in the terrorist attack that ensued, we saw the ideology of hatred brought to its logical endpoint. None of us will soon forget this attack on innocent civilians.…”