{"id":10718,"date":"2007-05-06T09:00:33","date_gmt":"2007-05-06T13:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/10718.html"},"modified":"2007-05-06T09:00:33","modified_gmt":"2007-05-06T13:00:33","slug":"sunday-discussion-group-98","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/sunday-discussion-group-98\/","title":{"rendered":"Sunday Discussion Group"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At a forum in DC earlier this week, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said he believes a third-party candidate could excel in the 2008 presidential race. &#8220;I think the public is fed up,&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/POLITICS\/blogs\/politicalticker\/2007\/05\/lieberman-third-party-candidate-could.html\">he said<\/a>. &#8220;If the two major parties don&#8217;t hear this going into &#8217;08, there is a real chance of an independent third-party candidacy &#8212; and watch out if that happens.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday, Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), who is on the far-right on every policy issue <i>except<\/i> the war in Iraq, suggested <a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/bloomberg\/20070504\/pl_bloomberg\/awpuh8ejxg_e_1\">he might be the guy for the job<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>An independent bid &#8220;is possible,&#8221; Hagel, 60, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television&#8217;s &#8220;Political Capital with Al Hunt,&#8221; scheduled to air [yesterday]. &#8220;I don&#8217;t ever foreclose any options.&#8221; He will decide in the next few months whether to run for a third Senate term, pursue the presidency or leave politics altogether, he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>As this relates to Hagel, his interest in a possible independent bid is interesting, if for no other reason, because it suggests a critic of the war in Iraq is simply unelectable in the Republican presidential primaries. Hagel has been eyeing a White House run for several years, and by toying publicly with a third-party bid, he seems to concede that his disapproval of the war puts the GOP nomination out of reach.<\/p>\n<p>But in the bigger picture, is this folly? Is there really an audience looking for a serious third-party bid? Are there circumstances whereby an independent candidate has a realistic shot at competing?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At a forum in DC earlier this week, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said he believes a third-party candidate could excel in the 2008 presidential race. &#8220;I think the public is fed up,&#8221; he said. &#8220;If the two major parties don&#8217;t hear this going into &#8217;08, there is a real chance of an independent third-party candidacy [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10718\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}