Standing Fast

Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE), a stalwart conservative who has emerged as one of Senate's strongest anti-war critics was supposed to announce his Presidential ambitions this morning; or at least put them to rest. Instead we get treated to this stunning announcement:

What? He drags everyone to an early morning press conference just to tell folks he is still thinking about his political future. Either this is a ploy to build more excitement about a Hagel 2008 bid, or he is waiting on some big news.

Hagel, despite being a strong conservative, stands no chance to winning the GOP nomination. There is a lot of dissatisfaction with the course of the Iraq war among Republican voters, particularly among those in Iowa and New Hampshire, but Hagel will have a hard time getting traction in a field dominated by the big three(Giuliani, McCain and Romney). He will play as well as Lieberman did in 2004. You don't get the G.O.P nomination in 2008 on the basis of being "anti-war".

He might make an interesting third party candidate though; a John Anderson of '08. He also might be the GOP half of a Unity '08 ticket.

The libertarians of antiwar.com have an interesting analysis of Hagel, seeing him as a descendant of the old Midwest Taftite anti-interventionists Republicans and portends a new political bi-partisan realignment based on the Iraq war. Blue state and red state will be no more. Instead the divide will be between interventionists and isolationists(or imperialist and anti-war depending on how you spin it). Interesting, but frankly I doubt it. Nearly every Democrat has jumped on board in varying degrees with the out of Iraq camp. Some Republicans, like Hagel and Sen. Sam Brownback have begun to distance themselves from Bush's troop surge, but it's still a minority. Most of the G.O.P will uncomfortably stick by Bush until its obvious the troop surge is a failure; but at that point his presidency will nearly be over freeing Republicans from the need to confront Bush head-on. The need for a radical re-alignment will be solved for now

The reason why it isn't an issue of political realignment is that the neo-conservative doctrine of preemptive war is already dead. It died in Iraq soon after the invasion and its death was confirmed by the nuclear deal cut between the White House and North Korea. Whoever gets into the White House in 08 will end the occupation if it is not ended sooner. Hagel doesn't represent anything but advanced common sense.