Chuck Hagel’s Very Bad Day

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Hagel delivers shaky performance
— The Hill

Hagel Pleads Ignorance: “I have a hard enough
time understanding American politics,
I certainly don’t understand Iranian politics.”
— Ace of Spades HQ

Chuck Hagel’s Ill-Received Performance
Puts Confirmation In Flux
— BuzzFeed

Is Chuck Hagel Failing?
— National Journal

Wow, he stunk it up in that confirmation hearing yesterday, huh? Let me just observe that Senator Hagel looks like a man who enjoys his whiskey, and has enjoyed it at the rate of at least a half-gallon a week for the past 40 years or so. Keep drinking like that and, by age 66, you’re probably not going to be at the top of your game.

Which isn’t to say that Senator Boozehead is also Senator Jew-Hater, but there’s a bit of the walk-like-a-duck issue involved here:

Ed Morrissey nails it:

The beauty of this clip isn’t just the spectacle of Graham making Hagel eat his own shinola. It’s the fact that 90 percent of the reason the left has gone along with this nomination is to see Hagel push back on questions exactly like this one. He was the guy who was going to speak truth to power by standing up to the neocon warmongers and their “Zionist” puppet-masters — and here he is, rolling over. You could almost hear liberals screaming at their TV sets when Graham asked him to name a dumb move taken by the U.S. at the behest of the Israel lobby, “Say ‘Iraq’, Chuck! Say ‘Iraq!’” But Hagel can’t make that move.

Exactly. The Left wanted Chuck to repudiate Bush’s Neo-Con War for Oil — the Jews! the Jews! — and instead he is forced to eat humble pie on national TV. Bad enough to have once made a few vaguely Stormfront-ish comments about Israel, but then to get up in front of a Senate hearing and deny everything . . . eh, it looks cowardly.

So the people who think U.S. foreign policy is secretly controlled by the Rothschild dynasty — hello, “True Freedom Fighter” John Tiessen — are disappointed in not having their beliefs officially affirmed in public, and must comfort themselves with the semi-clandestine knowledge that Senator Hagel is privately on their side:

M.J. Rosenberg: “Jews Against Israel,” self-hating apologist for the Sirhan Sirhan wing of the Democrat Party.

Y’know, it might be nice if we could have an honest debate about this kind of stuff. But the Left spent more than a half-century smearing the Right as anti-Semitic until, during the Bush years, the accusation was turned around the other way, so that now the Republican Party is alleged to be puppets dancing on Zionist strings. One might think it would be possible to embarrass Democrats by making them try to explain these contradictory accusations, but Republicans are such natural-born scaredy-cats, there’s no hope for the problem.

UPDATE (Smitty): Welcome, Instapundit readers!


40 comments

  2. Unless some Dems publicly defect Hagel will be confirmed anyway. What does anyone expect, that Obama will call Rumsfeld or Cheney and ask them? If not Hagel, SecDef will be some other drone placed to carry out Obama’s dismantling of DoD.

    To quote a great statesman, at this point, what difference does it make?

  3. No, I meant it exactly the way I said it: They’re scaredy-cats, afraid of being called names if they point out the ridiculous double-standards by which Democrats operate.

  5. Lefty wants to blame the dismantling of our military on republicans in the same fashion they are blaming them for the economic collapse. That’s the only reason they chose Hagel – for propaganda, along with his obvious Jew hating bonafides.

  8. Seriously: How much does Chuck Hagel drink? Even if he hasn’t touched a drop in weeks, he very much looks like a guy who spent decades knocking back the booze, and that kind of behavior has a cumulative effect which isn’t ideal for someone in a position of authority.

  13. I think there will be defections. Don’t think Schumer appreciated being embarrassed like this, and I suspect he’ll lead the charge to replace Hagel with Flournoy, who actually has experience at DoD.

  17. Remember, presidential debate #1 showed that you can be an out of touch, poorly-informed doofus and still end up as an important part of this Administration. Hagel will get nominated, and the mullahs will break out their secret stash of Hennessy.

  18. What are grassroots Republicans to do in a country where leftist values have been rammed down their throats?

    Adopt them as our own, that’s what. So Republicans become as shrill as the Party for Socialism and Liberation in denouncing “racism.” While the socialists see opposition to amnesty as proof of “racism,” Republicans imagine it when someone dares to question Israel. That way, they can prove how anti-racist they are.

    It is not a coincidence that the loudest grand inquisitors against Hagel, Li’l Lindsey and John McCain, are also the biggest supporters of amnesty for illegal aliens. It’s all part of DC’s policy of “Invade the world, invite the world.”

    As for me, watching the prissy Lindsey Graham lording his power over the hapless Hagel is sickening.

  19. Cowardice? Stupidity? Disengenuousness? As Hillary would say: “What difference does it make” to the Obama administration?

  25. No, what’s sickening is that Hagel was ever nominated. I honestly am less concerned about what he’s said that makes it obvious he’s a pea-brain, than the fact he is obviously a pea-brain.

    If he were saying things I agreed with, his pea-brainedness would still disqualify him for any Cabinet post, let alone SecDef.

  27. I think it’s legit to find both sickening. Grahmnesty is a sickening individual simply because he’s a squishling Quisling.

  29. You and me both. The video of Senator Lightloafer bullying Hagel is gut-wrenching. I can imagine Yagoda or Beria at Lubyanka terrorizing a helpless prisoner.

  34. Hagel was always an idiot, which was apparent to anyone who ever listened to him speak more than a scripted sentence or two at a time. It shows the danger in electing war heroes based solely upon their military service when it didn’t involve command at flag level.

    As such, though, he is the perfect SecDef to implement Obama’s policy of disarming the United States and destroying Israel.

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