Orrin Hatch: “I wonder sometimes if we do not treat the American public like they are idiots, when in fact the American public is a…”

“I wonder sometimes if we do not treat the American public like they are idiots, when in fact the American public is a very smart collective group of people. I just do not see why in the world we have to have government interfere with the first amendment privileges of free speech, just to mention one constitutional issue involved here, just because some think there are millionaires in the Senate. There have always been millionaires in the Senate, as far as I know, at least in this century. But there have always been a number of Senators--and there is a great number of Senators here today--who are not millionaires who made it here the hard way, even under this present system, and who will always be able to make it because the American people are not idiots. They are smart. They know what is going on. They have the ability to choose between competing candidacies. It seems to me that to put another layer of Federal regulations on what people can say and do in politics is not the way to do it, and it presumptively seems to believe that the American people do not have the capacity collectively or individually to make right decisions for themselves with regard to politics.”