Now is the time for one good man to come to the aid of his party.

I read Kyle Michaelis' posts at the New Nebraska Network for local Nebraska perspective on my preferred presidential candidate - Chuck Hagel. Kyle is a Democrat, and not - shall we say - politically aligned with Hagel's conservative ideology. Still, he usually has an interesting perspective, and can't help but display an occasional grudging, back handed admiration for Hagel in his posts. His two most recent posts focused on Hagel's presidential prospects: Chuck Hagel's Identity Crisis and "Signs of Life in "Hagel for President??". Kyle's assessment:

"It's certainly possible, however, that the Republican establishment for which Novak speaks is starting to wake to just how dire a situation they face in 2008 - to the point that they'd welcome a candidate like Hagel who could never truly be called an "anti-War" candidate but who might be able to pass himself off as "anti-Bush"...despite his being Bush's most consistent supporter in the U.S. Senate. Assuming such an "anti-Bush" candidate could survive a primary, that would be a pretty strong credential to carry in to the general election when two-thirds of the country actively disapproves of Bush's job performance."

I could take issues with a couple of Kyle's points, most notably his assertion that Hagel could not be called an "anti-war" candidate. He certainly could, and is, and should. He actually has more credibility in that regard than two of the three leading Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. However, I completely agree with Kyle's major point with this one modification -

The next President will not simply be anti-Bush as Kyle outlines. The next president, whether Republican or Democrat, will be "The AntiBush". The electorate always grows weary of two-term presidents and tends to gravitate toward their optical opposite. That electoral sense is magnified ten-fold with this administration. There is such a high degree of antipathy, exhaustion, and loathing for this President and this administration, that the electorate will reach for a perceived polar opposite like a drowning man reaching for a bit of floating debris. I suspect that this is the underlying reason for Clinton's strength in the Democratic party. Clinton/Bush opposition is hard-wired in the names themselves. You can see it any Republican/Democratic partisan argument which inevitably devolves to "Oh yeah? Well Bush did this!" - "Oh yeah? Well Clinton did that!" - "Oh yeah? Well Bush did this!" - "Oh yeah? Well Clinton did that!" ad nauseum. Hillary Clinton is the Democratic Party AntiBush.

Republicans will also nominate an AntiBush. No less a Republican luminary than Newt Gingrich has said that Republicans will have to run against Bush to succeed. While we are going to see a number of "born-again" anti-Bush Republicans before the primary season is over, there is only one credible candidate who can fill the shoes of The AntiBush. We are not talking about Senate votes here. We are talking about perception and optics:

• Bush is inarticulate, Chuck Hagel is a powerful and coherent speaker.
• Bush is proudly anti-intellectual, Hagel is an intellectual.
• Bush is a failed businessman, Hagel is a successful entrepreneur.
• Bush is a "decider" that manages by delegation and stays out of the details, Hagel is an idea man that can and has formulated policy and legislation.
• Bush is perceived as shallow and partisan, Hagel exudes gravitas and integrity, and has demonstrated his willingness to buck his own party.
  
• Bush is perceived as incompetent, Hagel is perceived as hyper-competent.
• Bush avoided service in Vietnam and has a questionable military record. Hagel is a Vietnam combat veteran and is a bona fide war hero.
• Bush is a "neo-conservative"/"compassionate conservative" ideological mess. Hagel is a rock solid conservative in the Reagan/Goldwater tradition.

Richard Nixon used to invoke a "silent majority" that would emerge in elections to support his policies. To a large degree, he was right. The "silent majority" was there, and supported him, right up until the time he betrayed them and their conservative sensibilities. I can offer no supporting documentation, but I believe there really is an "embarrassed majority" out there, both within the Republican Party and the electorate at large. The "embarrassed majority" voted for Bush, regrets it, and has yet to be heard from in a meaningful way. Perhaps the "none of the above" preference in a recent AP poll of Republicans is indicative of the "embarrassed majority" that will rally behind a Hagel candidacy.

I have no idea what Chuck Hagel will do about running for President. I do know what he should do. He should run. He should run as a Republican. He should run as a Republican that can restore the party to the bedrock conservative tradition of Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater. He should run as a Republican that can restore the fusionist alliance between fiscal and social conservatives that is pre-requisite to any Republican electoral success. He should run as an anti-war Republican. He should run as The AntiBush.

I'm a fan of Chris Mathews Hardball and watch it regularly. They are currently running a promotion soliciting viewers to send them homemade campaign videos. I checked out the ones they had posted, and decided they are pretty lame. So I says to myself - "Self - you can do lame campaign videos with the best of them." This is my contribution:

Now is the time...

Hagel's staff has not asked me, but I have some free advice for them. There are three themes/messages that a "Hagel for President" campaign should focus on and hammer over and over again.

1. "It's the war, stupid." - Hagel is the only credible anti-war Republican (except for Ron Paul - but the problem with Ron Paul is that he is Ron Paul).
2. Hagel is The AntiBush - (See above)
3. Hagel is a real conservative. - Unlike Bush, Cheney, or most of the current crop of Republican candidates.

This video hits on the first two of the three. I know, I know - two themes in one video is one too many. That is why this video is too long at two minutes. Hey - this is strictly amateur hour - you get what you pay for.

If Hagel gets in the race, I 'll put together another video that focuses on the third theme, and the large difference between him and the faux /politically expedient/fickle conservatism of the other leading candidates. Stay tuned.

Divided and Balanced.™ Now that is fair.

Technorati tags:Dick Cheney, Chuck Hagel, 2008 election, Goldwater, Reagan, Hillary Clinton,conservative, Democrat, Republican,George Bush.

Can Chuck Hagel save the GOP from the Bushies?

I would have loved to have been there to see it. Just to be a fly on the wall and see the reaction. Dick Cheney interrupting his undisclosed schedule and hustled from his limousine into the Capitol from whatever undisclosed location that the Vice President normally executes his undisclosed duties, prepared to cast a tie-breaking vote in the Senate on the Emergency Funding Bill for the Iraq War. A funding bill with a difference. A funding bill putting limits on the United States military mission in Iraq, and setting a goal of withdrawing troops not involved in that limited mission by March of 2008. A similar resolution had been defeated in the Senate only a few weeks before. But this time Democratic Senator Ben Nelson would vote for the bill, and that meant it would likely result in a tie. The administration had already threatened to veto any bill with any timetable. But the veto would not be needed, if Cheney cast the deciding vote.

"... the White House freshened the threat a few hours before the vote and again afterward. "The president is disappointed that the Senate continues down a path with a bill that he will veto and has no chance of becoming law,"... Vice President Dick Cheney traveled to the Capitol in case his vote was needed to break a tie, a measure of the importance the administration places on the issue." - Washington Post

It looked like this time Dick Cheney would be "The Decider", and cast that vote to defeat the measure. He had prepared a brief, direct and strong statement ready for an impromptu press briefing to be conducted immediately after the vote. Dick Cheney was looking forward to delivering that statement. That is when I would have liked to be that fly on the wall. When Dick Cheney was informed that Chuck Hagel decided to put principle over party and vote for the resolution. On this day, Dick Cheney was not "the decider". On this day it was Chuck Hagel who cast the deciding vote.

But this post is not really about Chuck Hagel, or Dick Cheney. This post is about the Republican Party and its continued drift further and further from the main stream of American thought. With this bill the Senate, like the House, was simply conducting the people's business. The bill, with the reduced mission, and goal of redeployment in 2008, accurately reflects the will of the majority of Americans. From the Pew Research Center this week:

"A solid majority of Americans say they want their congressional representative to support a bill calling for a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq by August 2008. Nearly six-in-ten (59%) say they would like to see their representative vote for such legislation, compared with just 33% who want their representative to oppose it. "

Hence the problem for Republicans in 2008 - the administration is defying the will of a growing majority of Americans, as reflected in the survey, and as evidenced by the mid-term elections.

Now, in truth, this bill deserves a veto. Not because of the Iraq war redeployment timeframe, but because the Democrats stuffed it full of pork to secure enough votes to get it passed. It won't break my heart to see it vetoed for that reason alone. In that regard, the veto is an example of divided government in action, restraining the growth of federal spending. A leaner bill will result from the veto.

My fear is that our happily divided government will be but a fleeting respite from the disaster of single party control if the administration continues down this path. As oulined in previous posts, it will be almost impossible for the Democrats to lose either house of congress in 2008. The only way to maintain a divided government will be to elect a Republican President in 2008. Whether out of arrogance, hubris, delusion, or simple incompetence, this administration is apparently willing to destroy any electoral hope for the Republicans in 2008 as a consequence of it's intransigence on the war.

Ryan Sager wrote in 'The Elephant in the Room" about the fracturing of the historically successful fusion between fiscal and social conservatives in the Republican party. He warns that a widening schism between the libertarian and evangelical wings in the Republican party could doom the parties chances in 2008 and beyond. In the last few days, it became clear to me that while the split he describes is real, it is fracturing on a different fault line. The split is between the traditional Conservative Republican (which includes both evangelicals and libertarians) and Republicans who are best described as "Bushies". I am not using that term as a perjorative, it is exactly how they define themselves. Jon Carroll in the San Francisco Chronicle took notice:

"The other interesting thing is the use by now-resigned Justice Department employee Kyle Sampson of the phrase "loyal Bushies." ...George W. Bush and the Republican Party are not coterminous. It would be hard to describe the belief system of a loyal Bushie, other than unquestioning faith in George W. Bush. Would he be in favor of reduced government spending, increased individual liberties, a conservative and prudent foreign policy? Nope. George W. Bush does not stand for any of those things. Loyal Bushies can be counted on to do the right thing, the Bush thing, whenever a thing needs doing. That's the belief system. "

Now, Jon Carroll is admittedly a San Francisco liberal and easy to dismiss. But, remarkably, his theme is echoed by conservative David Brooks in a column in the New York Times entitled "No U-Turns". In that column Brooks rejects the intellectual foundation of conservatism, and writes what could more accurately be titled "The Bushie Manifesto":

"...President Bush sensed this shift in public consciousness back in 1999. Compassionate conservatism was an attempt to move beyond the “liberty vs. power” paradigm. But because it was never fleshed out and because the Congressional G.O.P. rejected the implant, a new Republican governing philosophy did not emerge. The party is going to have to make another run at it. As it does, it will have to shift mentalities. The “security leads to freedom” paradigm doesn’t end debate between left and right, it just engages on different ground. It is oriented less toward negative liberty (How can I get the government off my back?) and more toward positive liberty (Can I choose how to lead my life?). Goldwater and Reagan were important leaders, but they’re not models for the future."

Both Glen Greenwald (from the left) and Andrew Sullivan (from the right) take Brooks to task:

Greenwald:

"It would maximize clarity in our political discussions if journalists could just ingest Brooks' central point: the dominant right-wing political movement in this country that has spawned and driven the Bush presidency has nothing to do with -- it is in fact overtly hostile to -- the ostensible principles of Goldwater/Reagan small-government conservatism. Though today's so-called "conservatives" exploit the Goldwater/Reagan mythology as a political prop, they don't believe in those principles in any way. That movement is the very antithesis of those principles... Brooks admits what has been crystal clear for some time -- namely, that so-called "conservatives" (meaning the contemporary political "Right") no longer believe (if they ever did) that government power should be restrained in order to maximize freedom. That belief system, says Brooks, is an obsolete relic which arose out of the the 1970s, and has been replaced by the opposite desire -- for expanded government power on every front."

Sullivan:

"... the Brooks experiment in turning the GOP into a religious, statist party for cronies and incompetents has been a disaster for Republicanism and a catastrophe for conservatism. Given no true conservative alternative, voters have gone back to the Dems. Brooks was an intellectual architect of both visions - massive intervention abroad, and warmed-over socialism at home. No wonder the conservative coalition has fallen apart, and people are now backing Democrats... The classic dodge: national greatness conservatism - big spending at home, big wars abroad - wasn't tried and therefore didn't fail. Please. It was tried, David, with bells on, and it has failed so spectacularly you need glasses with neocon thickness not to see it. In fact, its manifest failure may consign conservatism to the political wilderness for a generation - and has deeply increased the security dangers America now faces... Until the GOP thoroughly purges itself of the impulses of the Bush era - impulses enabled and supported by Brooks - they're finished. And they deserve to be."

I have wondered before about the incredible animus toward Chuck Hagel evident from some on the right. It never made sense to me. Chuck Hagel is by any measure a conservative's conservative:

"Look at his record, and you see a bona fide fiscal conservative, a social conservative, a successful entrepreneur, a limited government Republican in the Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater tradition and a decorated Vietnam war combat veteran. He is tough on crime, strong on defense, pro-gun with an "A" rating from the NRA, supports low taxes and limited spending, was rated a "Taxpayers Friend" by the NTU, is pro-business with an 87% rating from the US Chamber of Commerce, and even secured a 0% rating from NARAL indicating a perfect pro-life voting record."

Now I finally get it. Chuck Hagel is not a problem for traditional Republicans in the Goldwater/Reagan tradition. Chuck Hagel is not a problem for limited government, freedom-loving, libertarian conservatives. Chuck Hagel is a big problem for the "Bushie" statists.

I would like to think that the "Bushies" are wildly over-represented in the blogosphere, and there is a much larger plurality of traditional conservative Republicans (both libertarian and evangelical) in the electorate at large. I'd like to think that, but I am not sure. If the traditional conservative Republican base is alive and well, Chuck Hagel may yet lead the party back from the brink of disaster in 2008.

Divided and Balanced.™ Now that is fair.

Technorati tags: divided government, dick Cheney, libertarian, Chuck Hagel, 2008 election, Goldwater, Reagan, Iraq,conservative, Democrat, Republican,Funding Resolution,George Bush.