How many Congressional candidates can quote Bastiat while mostly parrying a question on the Republican nomination?  Mia Love talks economics, politics, and the Tea Party with Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds for PJTV on the eve of the Utah caucuses today. Glenn put this up on YouTube so that Utah Republicans planning on attending today’s GOP caucus meetings in the state get one last look at a rising Tea Party star:

Tina interviewed Love at CPAC, so be sure to watch that again, too.  We need grassroots candidates like Love competing for House seats, as well as state-legislature races, in order to get real change in Washington DC.  Speaking of which, while tonight’s caucuses won’t be definitive for Orrin Hatch, he’s taking them seriously nonetheless:

Seeking one last term, Republican U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch is facing what may prove to be the toughest re-election of his 36-year tenure in Thursday’s Utah Republican caucus against two popular younger Tea Party-backed candidates.

Conservative and heavily Republican Utah last elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate more than four decades ago, so the Republican nominee is usually considered the presumptive winner of the general election in November.

For a senior stalwart of the Republican mainstream like Hatch, the ranking Republican on the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, the Senate seat has long been regarded as his to lose. He was first elected in 1976 and turns 78 next week.

But former state Senator Dan Liljenquist, 37, and state Representative Chris Herrod, 46, are running this year against Hatch, saying now is the time for change.

Hatch could cinch the nomination with 60% of the vote in April’s state caucus, and so could his challengers, although that’s even less likely.   The process begins tonight as voters choose delegates to the state meeting in April, and that means doing a lot of politicking on the ground to keep the Tea Party from coalescing behind one candidate and getting enough delegates to turn out Hatch the way the Tea Party did with Bob Bennett.  Hatch may have to hope that no one hits 60% in April, because if that happens, then the two highest vote getters have to compete in a runoff primary — and that would probably benefit Hatch more than a Tea Party candidate.

Keep an eye on both contests tonight from the Utah caucuses.  There won’t be a definitive answer in either case, but it will be the start of an interesting narrative.