Hagel takes over the Straight Talk Express

August 21, 2006

Last week, Arianna Huffington looked at the 2008 landscape and said the “race on the Republican side looks like it could turn out to be McCain vs the non-McCain … And the man looking more and more like the non-McCain is Chuck Hagel.”

Oddly enough, that was before Hagel went on a tear on Iraq and his party yesterday.

Republicans have lost their way when it comes to many core GOP principles and may be in jeopardy heading into the fall elections, Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. says. Hagel, a possible presidential candidate in 2008, said Sunday that the GOP today is very different party from the one when he first voted Republican.

“First time I voted was in 1968 on top of a tank in the Mekong Delta,” said Hagel, a Vietnam veteran. “I voted a straight Republican ticket. The reason I did is because I believe in the Republican philosophy of governance. It’s not what it used to be. I don’t think it’s the same today.”

Hagel asked: “Where is the fiscal responsibility of the party I joined in ’68? Where is the international engagement of the party I joined — fair, free trade, individual responsibility, not building a bigger government, but building a smaller government?”

Describing his party, Hagel added, “I think we’ve lost our way.” Indeed, Hagel was quite chatty yesterday.

He also said, on national television, that the president probably “overstepped his bounds” by initiating a warrantless-search program, announced his opposition to increasing troop levels in Iraq, and said Iraq is already in the midst of a “very defined civil war,” positions that are at odds with his GOP allies, including McCain. As Arianna put it last week, “It’s almost as if McCain has abandoned the Straight Talk Express on the side of the road and Hagel has hopped into the driver’s seat.”

I think that’s true, but I’d encourage political observers to remember that Hagel is still very much a conservative Republican. Like every likely presidential aspirant in 2008, he’s looking for a niche, and he seems to have settled on being the “anti-Bush conservative.”

Hagel’s criticism, in other words, is far more a sign of him splitting with the administration than it is his splitting with the dominant conservative wing of his party. When he says “we’ve lost our way,” in some ways he’s talking about the Republicans not being conservative enough. It’s not like Hagel is willing to suddenly consider a progressive agenda.

That said, it’s kind of nice to have a high-profile Republican bashing the GOP and bolstering some Dem talking points on national security issues, isn’t it?

More cheap talk from one of the cheapest of talkers. It’s good in that it will reinforce public perception of Republican perfidy, but as for the man himself his voting record speaks a much different story.

And until that record changes, he’s just another cheap weasel trying to escape the trap he’s made for himself.

  • While Hagel has the refreshing sound of a Republican who’s feet are on the ground, he still is mouthing some of the same conservatve silliness that put this country into the economic mess it’s in. The whole mantra about making government smaller is BS and every conservative should get that through their thick skin. Small government is code to their rich, campaign-contributing friends that there will be a present in next year’s 1040 form for them that others won’t have. Just add the cost of the tax cuts to the deficit.

    Government should be whatever size it needs to be to get the work of the people done. Smaller government? Smaller than what? We need to stop giving these guys a free pass when they expound such claims by asking them just what should they get rid of for their “smaller government?” A smaller army? Howzabout privatizing airport security? Most likely it would be killing off entitlement programs that keep the bottom from falling off this society and give this nation a veneer of civility.

    Chuck, it’s your party of the last six years that have grown the deficit by leaps and bounds AND grown the size of government in every dimension. What will keep the government reasonably sized and reasonably efficient is oversight and to quit smoking the crack of self-serving government pork. Funny how you guys lacked ANY self-restraint once you came to power. Quit talking about the myth of smaller government and until you talk about running the government well, you’ll just be another tax cuts for the rich to heap more debt on the less advantaged classes Republican.

  • http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0131-01.htm

    I think it’s important that anyone mentioning Hagel, needs to include Hagel’s baggage he brings to any topic covered. This is one huge and dangerous individual playing in an arena that requires trust. The last thing that happens when you or I cast our votes, is the computer taking whatever we clicked, and counting our vote in secret. Hagel, above all others, knows exactly what happens, and he, above all others, is responsible, personally, for bringing proprietary voting systems to America. Voters have literally lost their right to vote, paper trails notwithstanding, and Hagel lies at the very heart of this tragedy.

  • I saw Hagel interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday yesterday. He sounded like a “Ronald Reagan Republican”–from a strong military, to smaller government, to “pro-life.” In effect, Hagel was saying that modern conservatism jumped the track (or “the shark”) when Bush and Cheney hooked up with the neoconservation movement, born by PNAC and led by Bill Kristol, Richard Perle, and others, too numerous to mention.

    I also saw the McLaughlin Report yesterday, and Eleanor Clift and Pat Buchanan were in agreement 98% of the time on the issues of Israel and the Lebanon War, the mess in Iraq, and the failures of the Bush Administration. It such an odd feeling to find myself agreeing with Pat Buchanan on those issues and know that he is too much of a social conservative for my taste! We must live in the strangest of times!

  • If we had to suffer through Lieberman providing “bipartisan” cover for Bush’s worst decisions, and giving R’s a way to use a Dems own words against the positions of the majority of Dems, then by karma we deserve the gift of a Hagel providing bipartisan cover for our attacks on Bush’s follies and giving us a way to use an R’s words against the position of the Rethug administration. It has a nice symmetry to it.

  • Chuck Hagel, just the latest to discover what happens when you make an unholy alliance to gain power (See also, John Danforth).

    This might be an attempt by Chuck to secure a portion of the Republican’t base for 2008, but I don’t know how well that will work. Probably not too bad, as much of the same base wants as bad as it can to oppose John McCain and all his works.

    Boy George II is trying his damnedest to ensure that his successor is bequeathed a failed war and failed foreign policy. You can bet that he won’t lift a finger to make things better for McCain or Hagel.

    George Felix Allen Junior now…

  • There’s a big chunk of the GOP rank-and-file who were passengers on that straight-talk express. When McCain bailed on them to embrace the radical extremist hatemongers of the GOP, he abandoned those passengers—and in turn, they started getting off the train. Hagel is doing nothing more than attempting to get those passengers back on the train—before they get the idea that voting for Dems might actually be a smoother, more reliable ride. But I’m willing to bet that “F*%&#$ Chuckie” (the two words rhyme, by the way) is a day late—and a dollar short—on this one….

  • Why can’t we do what Canada did? After a brief dalliance with voting machines, Canada went back to paper ballots, for all federal and provincial elections anyway. They’re interested in electronic methods, but cautious. Amazing that we never thought of that, huh?

    Scoop, 31 Jan 2003, ran this:

    On October, 10, 2002 Bev Harris, author of the upcoming “Black Box Voting: Ballot-Tampering” in the 21st Century, revealed that Republican Senator Chuck Hagel has ties to the largest voting machine company, Election Systems & Software (ES&S). She reported that he was anowner, Chairman and CEO of Election Systems & Software (called American Information Systems until name change filed in 1997). ES&S was the ONLY company whose machines counted Hagel’s votes when he ran for election in 1996 and 2002. The Hill, a Washington D.C. newspaper that covers the U.S. national political scene, confirmed her findings today and uncovered more details.

    I just don’t understand how anyone can take anything Chuck Hagel says seriously. Says something about how low the level of political aspirations and dialogue has sunk in this country, doesn’t it?

  • Both McCain and Hagel have a long history of challenging the party publicly. This is despised by many base Republican voters. Both are not trusted by most fundamentalists, either, and both are not sufficiently “for” tax cuts.

    I think both of these guys are nonstarters for the nomination. And McCain is married to the mess in Iraq.

  • Chuck Hagel votes the republican line 95% of the time. He blathers a good line on Sunday morning. His votes on the Senate floor are not consistent with his Sunday morning chatter.

    There was a long article in the Lincoln Journal Star last week. Regarding his presidential aspirations, he claims to not have decided and he hasn’t spent any time in Iowa recently. He also said that he will wait until after the elections to decide. If the Iraq mess causes a train wreck in November, and it becomes apparent his stance on Iraq is the winner, then he might throw his hat in the ring. The relevant quote:

    Sometime after this November’s national elections, Hagel will decide whether to seek the presidency in 2008.

    Or be a candidate for a third term in the Senate.

    Or steer a new course in either the private or public sector.

    The reality is this: If his party does poorly in congressional elections this autumn, that’s a call for change and an opening for him in the Republican presidential derby.

    The whole article is here: http://www.journalstar.com/articles/2006/08/18/top_story/extras/doc44e4f19c0f14e746864536.txt

    My conclusion? He’s betting that this particular stance will be the winning stance when Nov 8 rolls around.

    Until his votes on the floor of the Senate match his Sunday morning rhetoric, I will continue to think it is nothing more than posturing rhetoric.

  • Senator Hagel is certainly a Republican, not an independent or progressive, but he is ideologically consistent and has excellent advice on foreign policy, much of which is agreed with by those from across the political spectrum (just, unfortunately, not the White House). I certainly hope he runs for President in 2008.

  • Charlie,
    Hagel just a younger version of McCain–except McCain began licking Bush’s boots back in 2001. It’s only a matter of time before Hagel kisses somebody’s ass.

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