Wednesday, May 26, 2004
A GOP Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand
From Tapped, more pissed offGOP'ers.
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"But it doesn't look far off. A number of moderate Republican senators -- and I'm not just thinking of everybody's favorite McMaverick -- are inching closer to full-on condemnation of the president and his advisors. The top candidate for committing party treason on the Senate floor seems to be Chuck Hagel, the Nebraskan who sits on the Foreign Relations and Intelligence Committees. He's been off-message for a while, but the past week has brought some strikingly disapproving comments. In an interview with Prospect columnist Terence Samuel, published in U.S. News & World Report, Hagel said: "We need new ideas, new thinking. That's what I would tell the president: 'Mr. President, you've got to spend some time by yourself... go run or look out a window.' "
Now, it should be noted that Hagel also said he would support Bush's re-election, but he has to know that this sounds like a call for Bush to follow in the great Texan tradition of declining to run for a second term. He's also repeatedly criticized key Bush advisors, though rarely by name; Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle are all named in the U.S. News article. Speaking on CNN Late Edition, Hagel said that Bush "essentially hold[s] h<"imself hostage to two or three key advisers," and expressed support for more Democratic involvement"
