A Good Republican: Chuck Hagel

I was listening to NPR at work the other day, and Chuck Hagel (Repub Senator from Nebraska) was the guest. I guess he has a new book out. At first I found him uninteresting: the usual stuff about voters being sick of both parties. Truth is this year, and, I think, since 2006, voters have been flooding to the Democratic Party in droves as Dems, perhaps despite some of its entrenched leadership, has been electing fresh, new, progressive faces with very populist ideas.

But when Hagel started talking about the Iraq Quagmire, I was incredibly impressed. The man is smart and he saw from day one that the Bush Administration was wrong about invading Iraq. It almost was as if Hagel had a list of my own talking points as he discussed the stupidity of taking our eyes of al-Qaeda, illegally invading Iraq, allowing al-Qaeda into Iraq for the first time on any large scale, etc.

I am very interested in winning the Senate. But in Nebraska we are unlikely to get a real progressive and I think we might get a worse Republican. So I am sorry to see Chuck Hagel retire. I disagree with him on most issues, but he is the kind of Republican that used to be the norm: someone I disagreed with but respected. He is so much better than the fools that have taken over the Republican Party. I wish Hagel had declared himself an Independent and stayed in Congress. It would have made a stronger statement of protest against Bush and it would have kept a principled Conservative in Congress.

Can't find a link to the NPR interview, but here is a statement made by Hagel in an address to the Council on Foreign Relations about Bush:

I have to say this is one of the most arrogant, incompetent administrations I’ve ever seen or ever read about...They have failed the country.