I tend to view Chuck Hagel’s retirement as something of a bad thing.\u00c2\u00a0 It is not so much his departure — with him liable to show up in some foreign policy think tank or as a token Republican in a Democratic administration — before winding up to cashing in as a lobbyist in that permanent government slot.\u00c2\u00a0 Despite some rhetorical flourishes at Bush’s policy in Iraq and various facets of the “Imperial Presidency”, he maintains a solid voting record with the Bush Administration, up to and including those arenas he criticizes Bush for — it is the “well, with great reluctance” trap of the “Centrist”\/”Moderate”\/”Mr. Serious”.<\/p>\n
He is a maverick to the name of maverick.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 He would be infuriating as a Democrat — he would be Joseph Biden.\u00c2\u00a0 His greatest asset is that he annoys Republican partisans.
\nI suppose one cannot underestimate that part of the Senator’s power — the Sunday morning blathering fest, which is why Lieberman is more aggrivating than a number of other Senators.\u00c2\u00a0 The word on the street is that the Democrats are going to siphon us with Bob Kerrey, automatic front-runner for the Senate seat against anybody the Republicans might put up there.\u00c2\u00a0 I think I know the Democratic Party well enough to know roughly what they will be doing with Bob Kerrey — somewhere within the Good Ol’ Boys’ Network, his stature will be inflated and grown — Nebraska’s Senate race will be\u00c2\u00a0 a Top Priority, and probably THE TOP PRIORITY in terms of the down-the-ticket ballot.\u00c2\u00a0 All those liberal blogs (and moveon.org) — the “netroots” — as the election proceeds, will be tapped to donate to Bob Kerrey.<\/p>\n
Bob Kerrey, ironically probably as a whole to the left of Nebraska’s current Democratic Senator (The most conservative Democrat in the Senate), but where Ben Nelson tends toward his issues of what Nebraska needs and doesn’t make have a huge public profile, Bob Kerrey will.\u00c2\u00a0 And on that issue of “War and Peace”.\u00c2\u00a0 An interesting little dilution.\u00c2\u00a0 The drive to something of a 60-seat filibuster-proof majority is mooted.<\/p>\n
Identical voting record tendency on that area of concern, rhetorically worlds apart, probably the same effect within their parties — though the Democrats can’t quite absorb it as well the Republicans — unless it were a matter of the Democrats maintaining a majority over a minority — which even a tepid party and tepid agenda is an improvement for the short-term, no matter the corrosive forces within the party.\u00c2\u00a0 (Ie: Barbara Boxer heading the committee covering global warming versus Jame Inhoffe.)\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 It isn’t though.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 So, Nebraskans, vote for the Republican.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I tend to view Chuck Hagel’s retirement as something of a bad thing.\u00c2\u00a0 It is not so much his departure — with him liable to show up in some foreign policy think tank or as a token Republican in a Democratic administration — before winding up to cashing in as a lobbyist in that permanent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2563\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}