Why Chuck Hagel terrifies hawks, GOP
Here’s a rule of thumb for understanding Washington politics: On the rare occasion when everything including the kitchen sink gets thrown at a cabinet nominee to block an appointment, there’s a solid chance that the opposition is not merely about the collage of negative headlines. Instead, it’s more likely that the opposition is motivated by a deeper belief that the nominee fundamentally threatens the Beltway’s Permanent Bipartisan Power Structure™. That is particularly the case when a nominee is seen as a threat to the lucrative business of permanent war — a business whose profit margins, employment footprint across America, campaign contributions and think-tank underwriting make it, by far, the most powerful pillar of that power structure. This, no doubt, is a good way to understand what is almost certainly fueling much of the opposition to the nomination of former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel as the next secretary of defense.
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Specifically, at the very moment that the defense industry’s army of lobbyists is already in a full-on panic about mild sequestration cuts to the Pentagon, Hagel is viewed by the defense-coddling D.C. establishment as a threat to defense spending — thanks to two previously little-noticed comments he made in 2011. In an interview that year with the Financial Times about a defense budget that is bigger than most of the rest of the world’s combined (and one which can’t account for $2 trillion), he dared to say that said budget “has been bloated” and “needs to be pared down.” In a separate speech at the Council on Foreign Relations, he said the “Defense Department budget (is) not a jobs program — it’s not an economic development program for my state or any district.”
As U.S. News and World Report points out, these statements track recent public opinion polling data showing far more Americans believe we spend too much on the military rather than too little. Yet, as mainstream as Hagel’s comments are in America at large, they are considered radical in a Washington where the same Republican senators who decry the deficit cite the prospect of any defense spending cuts (“sequestration”) as a major reason to avoid a long-term bipartisan budget deal.
This is why, if you listen closely, you can hear defense spending as a common theme bubbling beneath much of the diffuse noise against Hagel’s nomination. For example, after reeling off the now-standard talking points about Hagel being weak and “naive,” Texas Sen. John Cornyn (who has raked in a whopping $355,026 from the defense industry) let slip that one of his big concerns is that Hagel purportedly “believes the Defense Department can sustain the sort of draconian cuts contained in sequestration.” Likewise, in a Wall Street Journal column, Republican Rep. Tom Cotton concluded a tirade against Hagel by slamming him for “seem(ing) willing to accept devastating cuts to defense spending.” Meanwhile, the Washington Post editorial board, a longtime stalwart supporter of more defense spending, cited Hagel’s willingness to discuss the Pentagon’s bloated budget as (not coincidentally) the very first reason to oppose his nomination.
http://www.salon.com/2013/01/07/why_chuck_hagel_terrifies_hawks_gop/
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