WTF Is Going On With Chuck Hagel?

[deminks]

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/02/wtf-going-chuck-hagel

(snip)

It's not that a filibuster would be crazy because Chuck Hagel is himself a Republican. The truth is that he's been an apostate Republican for a while and has very few fans left among his former colleague. The reason it's crazy is just because it's crazy. If that doesn't seem like the most cogent argument you've ever heard, it's because words sort of fail me here. The scale of the collective temper tantrum from congressional Republicans has simply been off the charts ever since the election. It started with the insane lynch mob that went after Susan Rice, progressed through the fiscal cliff, then more Benghazi craziness, the debt ceiling, the sequester, and now Chuck Hegel. Hell, even Jack Lew—who, you might recall, has been nominated as Treasury Secretary—is getting grilled over what he knew about Benghazi and when he knew it.

This is just insane. If there's one thing practically everyone agrees about, it's that presidents should basically get to pick their own cabinets. You organize an earnest party-line effort to derail someone only if there's some pretty serious evidence of malfeasance or incompetence. Hagel probably won't go down in history as a great Secretary of Defense, but he easily passes that bar. He's a standard issue DC pol with no skeletons in his closet, no bizarre views, and no scandals in his background. You wouldn't normally even object to someone like that, and you certainly wouldn't filibuster him, which is entirely without precedent going back at least 40 years.

So why are Republicans doing this? I can't quite figure it out. Is it a pure pander to the Israel lobby? A way of ginning up the tea party base? Revenge against Hagel for betraying them? Knee-jerk opposition to anything Obama wants? An expression of sheer, uncontrollable rage?

(end snip)

It is insane. They don't really have a purpose, they just hate.

[freshwest]

1. I'd call it the GOP War on Terra coming home to roost. They're the ones afraid now.

[dgibby]

2. Little Lindsey's pandering.

He's not well-liked in SC-too liberal, don'tcha know, so he's trying to establish street cred with the radical right. He's scared they're going to primary his sorry butt, and they probably will. He's already been censured twice, IIRC.

[frazzled]

3. I choose: "Revenge against Hagel for betraying them"

I watched most of the committee hearing the other day, and it was starting to sound like the House Unamerican Activities Committee. I mean, it was getting really whack, with conjectures that, who knows, maybe some of his speaking fee money might have come from North Korea. Or perhaps he pals around with Iranian terrorists.

[think]

7. That and the fact that Hagel might be an axman for pet projects

And the congress critter's MIC lobbyists will have none of that.....

[JHB]

4. Three things:

1) Obama wants him, therefore they oppose him;
2) all of the above in your speculations, in varying degrees with different people;
3) because as a party they've lost their minds. They have no incentive to do their real jobs, and every incentive to grandstand.

[The Link]

5. Hagel sucks but elections have consequences.

The President won...he picks his cabinet.

[TwilightGardener]

6. Hagel is the man for the job. And the President picks his cabinet.

[think]

9. Agree. /nt

[monmouth3]

8. Hagel does not suck.