Utah GOP decided Sen. Bob Bennett "needed to be humbled"

Bob Bennett was easy pickings. Long thought of as conservative just because of his state of origin and his votes on judicial nominees, Bennett had in fact bent over backward time and again in favor of big government and pork, all at the expense of Utah’s values. As one of Mitch McConnell’s “wise old men,” Bennett is one of the people largely responsible for the bastardization of conservatism.

Now, the great disentangling of conservatism has begun. Conservatives have had enough of being just a token of a Republican Party that never actually opts for smaller government and never actually believes in the limited powers of a federal government.

Bob Bennett, for example, voted that the individual mandate is unconstitutional, but he refused to take it out of his own health care alternative because notwithstanding its unconstitutionality, he thought it was needed. He also famously declared the constitution “an outmoded document of an agrarian society”.

If you want a nutshell explanation of Utah, it is this: Bob Bennett decided he was smarter than all the folks back home and the folks back home decided he needed to be humbled.