Hagel Droppings

What is Hagel’s problem? This morning I’m checking out the news, and I find this:

Thanks to GOP-backed spending policies, Republicans have transformed themselves into the Party across the aisle, an often dissident Republican senator says.

"In terms of the deficit, we have blown the top right off," charged Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE). "We're a bunch of Democrats." In a wide-ranging interview with the New York Times, he responded to Deborah Solomon's remark that she had never heard anyone call President Bush a Democrat.

No doubt we have allowed too much spending. But to call the Republicans a bunch of Democrats? Geez, what an insult.

He goes on:

Hagel said "That's my point. We're less honest about it. We built the biggest government history has ever seen under a Republican government. The Democrats are better because they are honest about it. They don't pretend. I admire that. They'll say: "We want more money. We need more money."

Did you catch that? “The Democrats are better.” If the Democrats are better and he admires them so much, why doesn’t he cross the aisle? He might as well, for all the good he’s doing our side.

Hagel added that he wants to take the GOP "back to the party of Eisenhower, Goldwater and Reagan. It was a pretty simple party in those days. It was all about limited government, fiscal responsibility, strong national defense and pro-trade foreign policy."

But the Democrats are better at all that, right? Gee, Chuck, is the Republican Party good for ANYTHING in your eyes?

Hagel also didn't spare his artillery against the Administration's Iraq war policies, stating that "If someone says I am a disloyal Republican because I am not supporting my party, let them say it. War is bigger than politics."

I’ll say it. You’re not only a disloyal Republican, you’re an idiot.

Citing his service in Vietnam, where he was twice wounded and lost some of his ability to hear, he recalled that "Congress was absent during the Vietnam War, and they didn't ask the tough questions, and consequently we lost 58,000 Americans and lost a war and humiliated this nation. It took a generation to get over it. As long as I am here as a U.S. senator, I am going to do whatever I can to make sure that isn't going to happen."

Now we have him citing similarities to the Vietnam War? Geez, it’s hard to know where to start here. Does he REALLY think tough questions aren’t being asked about this war? Does he remember who was in charge back then? Does he remember WHY we lost in Vietnam?

He danced around the question of whether he will run for President in 2008. "I haven't said I am running," he told Solomon.

Go ahead, I DARE you.

JAS ADDS: For what it's worth, Hagel is right about federal spending. Republicans at least had a foot on the ground of fiscal reality when they attained control of Congress a decade ago, and kept a toehold through the Clinton years, but since 2000 the appropriations dam has burst and no elected Pachyderm has even suggested fixing it. On the other hand, Ms. Solomon might have asked the Nebraskan McCainiac how he voted on the restoration of farm subsidies a year or two ago, or whether he opposes the bloated highway bill and would vote to sustain a Bush veto of it.

My guess is he's as avid a piglet as any of his senatorial colleagues. This take seems bolstered by the incoherence with which he conflates the Eisenhower Administration - the epitome of free-spending, a-little-less-statist-than-the-Democrats Rockefeller Republicanism - with the principled small-government conservatism of Goldwater and Reagan. It was, indeed, a "pretty simple party in those days" - it was also buried in the permanent minority because it stood for nothing and fought only for the best tee-times. I'd cite 'Pubbies like Hagel as evidence of the GOP's evolution into a governing majority, except that I can't remember the Democrats, even in their Great Society heyday, ever being beset by so many "mavericks" trashing their own and helping the opposition block the majority's policy agenda.

As for Hagel's Vietnam fetish, if he wants to prevent Iraq from reprising that sorry episode, he might try defending our efforts there and doing verbal battle against the Democrats who are actively attempting to bring about another such unnecessary - and, in this instance, lethal - self-inflicted defeat.

But then, if he did that, he wouldn't get plum interviews with New York Times reporterettes, would he?