Subway Series: In Flight With Orrin Hatch

March 10, 2011 -- Orrin Hatch has kept his Senate career aloft through 34 years and six elections. He's not about to let Tea Party activists crash it now.

So even though he famously worked across the aisle with his friend Ted Kennedy, and voted for the Wall Street bailout in 2008, Hatch, the Utah Republican, has a simple message he wants to send to the Tea Party.

"I tell them to just look at those people who were on Captain Sullenberger's plane and landed in the Hudson," Hatch told ABC's Jonathan Karl in a Subway Series interview. "They survived because of experience. And that's what I have. I have experience that by any measure is conservative and staunchly conservative."

Watch Jonathan Karl's interview with Senator Orrin Hatch here.

Hatch saw his friend and former colleague, now-former Sen. Bob Bennett, lose a Utah Republican primary last year and he's in no mood to taste that tea.

He has worked hard in recent months to endear himself to conservative activists and the Tea Party. Hatch, a Mormon who is notoriously polite and soft-spoken on Capitol Hill, has also taken a harder edge in criticizing President Obama.

Last week he told a group of Utah students that the President's health care law is a "one-size-fits-all federal government dumb-ass program," he said, according to the Utah State University Statesman. "It really is an awful piece of crap."

Hatch apologized for using the strong (for him) language, but said there are even tougher sentiments bottled up inside.