{"id":8254,"date":"2006-08-21T11:20:28","date_gmt":"2006-08-21T15:20:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8254.html"},"modified":"2006-08-21T11:20:28","modified_gmt":"2006-08-21T15:20:28","slug":"hagel-takes-over-the-straight-talk-express","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/hagel-takes-over-the-straight-talk-express\/","title":{"rendered":"Hagel takes over the Straight Talk Express"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, Arianna Huffington looked at the 2008 landscape and said<\/a> 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.”<\/p>\n

Oddly enough, that was before<\/i> Hagel went on a tear<\/a> on Iraq and his party yesterday.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

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?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Describing his party, Hagel added, “I think we’ve lost our way.” Indeed, Hagel was quite chatty yesterday.
\n
\nHe also said, on national television, that the president probably “overstepped his bounds<\/a>” by initiating a warrantless-search program, announced his opposition<\/a> to increasing troop levels in Iraq, and said Iraq is already in the midst of a “very defined civil war<\/a>,” positions that are at odds with his GOP allies, including McCain. As Arianna put it<\/a> 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.”<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

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<\/i>. It’s not like Hagel is willing to suddenly consider a progressive agenda.<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/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-8254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8254","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=8254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}