The Nod of Chucky: Obama Takes Stab at Lawmakers Who Derailed Rice
In a nomination that was as much about President Obama thumbing his nose at Senate opponents of a Susan Rice nomination as it was about putting on a “bipartisan” display, former Nebraska GOP Sen. Chuck Hagel was nominated for Defense secretary today.
With retiring Defense Secretary Leon Panetta quipping that he was looking forward “dealing with a different set of nuts” back on his California walnut farm, Obama proposed turning the reins of the Pentagon over to “the leader that our troops deserve.”
And, knowingly, the president turned up the spigot of controversy — adding to the day’s nominations a tip to counterterrorism adviser John Brennan as new head of the CIA.
Brennan has a track record of comments that have given conservatives and national security hawks pause — including referring to jihad as legitimate holy struggle — and questions still swirl about his role in Benghazi, but his nomination didn’t evoke the reaction Hagel’s did. With multiple nominations to juggle — and an almost assured confirmation for Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) at the State Department — Republicans have zeroed in on the battle they wish to fight: against a senator who used to serve in their ranks.
“Chuck Hagel’s leadership of our military would be historic. He’d be the first person of enlisted rank to serve as secretary of Defense, one of the few secretaries who have been wounded in war, and the first Vietnam veteran to lead the department. As I saw during our visits together to Afghanistan and Iraq, in Chuck Hagel our troops see a decorated combat veteran of character and strength. They see one of their own,” Obama said in the East Room announcement.
“Chuck represents the bipartisan tradition that we need more of in Washington. For his independence and commitment to consensus, he’s earned the respect of national security and military leaders, Republicans and Democrats — including me,” he added. “In the Senate, I came to admire his courage and his judgment, his willingness to speak his mind — even if it wasn’t popular, even if it defied the conventional wisdom.”
The opposition to a Hagel nomination began even before Obama stepped up to the podium today. But once it was official, the voices from the GOP grew louder and more resolute.
“I’ll be a no vote on the Armed Services Committee and on the floor,” Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) said. “Given Chuck Hagel’s statements and actions on a nuclear Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah, I think his confirmation would send exactly the wrong message to our allies and enemies alike.”
“Israel, our strongest ally in the region, is dealing with a lot of threat and uncertainty right now; Hagel would make that even worse,” Vitter said.
“I am surprised and disappointed President Obama has chosen to move forward with Senator Hagel’s nomination given the significant concerns that both Democrats and Republicans in the Senate have expressed about Senator Hagel’s positions and past votes on issues regarding some of our closest allies and most pressing national security threats,” said Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio).
“I believe Senator Hagel should get a fair look and an opportunity to defend his record, his past comments, and his current beliefs, but I don’t understand why the administration is looking to pick yet another political fight instead of working with Congress to solve some of the very real problems we face as a country,” Portman added.
GOP Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) told CNN it was “premature” to talk about putting a hold on Hagel’s nomination just yet.
“We have a number of people, including my colleague, Dan Coats, and others who I know you’ve heard from just recently, who’ve expressed their concerns, John McCain, Lindsey Graham and others,” Cornyn said. “There have been a number of Democrats who privately have said that they have concerns and are unwilling to commit to his confirmation.”
“So there’s going to be a lot happen between now and the hearing, and after the hearing.”
One of those skeptical pro-Israel, tough-on-Iran Democrats said Hagel needs to answer some key questions.
“I have concerns based on positions he has taken and statements he has made on a variety of topics,” said Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), who has asked for a one-on-one meeting with Hagel. “Despite my reservations, I will not prejudge his nomination but will give him ample opportunity to explain himself and current thinking on the future state and scope of our military, relationships with our allies, including Israel, and how he believes we should address challenges to our national security like Iran.”
And, like Obama’s failed attempt to nominate UN Ambassador Rice for secretary of State, the Hagel opposition didn’t just come from the chamber that will vote on the nomination, either.
“Senator Hagel’s incendiary views of Israel are only the tip of the iceberg. On Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran and defense spending, Hagel’s reported views call into question his judgment about the most important matters facing our national security,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said in a lengthy statement. “Taken together, Hagel’s views represent a call for a broad retreat from the preeminent role America has played, and must continue to play, in the world during a period of profound tumult and instability.”
“Hagel opted for political expediency in opposing the surge in Iraq, and supported a retreat that would have ceded victory to al Qaeda and Iran. The nomination of a man known primarily for opposing sanctions and military action against Iran strongly suggests that all options are not on the table. Hagel’s nomination telegraphs weakness in the Middle East and defeatism in Afghanistan, where our Afghan partners will surely be concerned, and our Taliban and Iranian adversaries will surely be emboldened,” Cantor added.”
Anti-Defamation League director Abe Foxman said he respects Obama’s prerogative to pick his cabinet, but Hagel has to address the myriad concerns surrounding his positions.
“I particularly hope Senator Hagel will clarify and explain his comments about the ‘Jewish Lobby’ that were hurtful to many in the Jewish community,” Foxman said.
“There are serious concerns about Hagel’s commitments to the efficacy of sanctions and a credible military option against Iran, on pressing the European Union to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, on sustaining the U.S. policy on the terrorist Hamas regime in Gaza, on the special nature of the U.S.-Israel relationship and Israel’s quest for peace and security, and on gay rights,” American Jewish Committee Executive Director David Harris said.
“…AJC has shared our concerns with members of the U.S. Senate, who have the responsibility to ask the probing questions about Hagel’s record and vision.”
Israel opponents tried to pose the question as a choice between the Israel lobby — which, as noted by Foxman, Hagel has been criticized for derisively referring to before — or the former Nebraska senator.
“Senator Hagel will face a difficult and at times a deliberately embarrassing questioning, but WE THE PEOPLE, will not let that happen,” wrote Mohamed Khodr at the Sabbah Report. “These elected traitors will hear from America, all of America, that we as their employers demand they work for our interests and not for Israel or AIPAC.”
The Emergency Committee for Israel launched ChuckHagel.com to detail disturbing Hagel views. J Street turned its site into a pro-Hagel portal.
“Hagel has demonstrated that he is committed to Israel’s security and its future as a democratic state with a Jewish majority living in peace with its neighbors,” J Street said in a statement. “…The fact that Hagel has insisted on independent thinking, weighing each issue on its merits instead of blindly following along with the herd, we regard as an asset.”
Absent from reaction one way or the other was Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), whose foreign policy isolationism views aren’t too remote from Hagel’s.
Tea Party colleague Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), though, had cautiously kinder words for the nominee than some others in his party.
“I have concerns based on positions he has taken and statements he has made on a variety of topics,” Lee said. “Despite my reservations, I will not prejudge his nomination but will give him ample opportunity to explain himself and current thinking on the future state and scope of our military, relationships with our allies, including Israel, and how he believes we should address challenges to our national security like Iran.”
With the controversial nomination sandwiched between two intense negotiating periods with congressional Republicans — over the Bush tax cuts, and now over spending cuts and the debt ceiling — White House press secretary Jay Carney brushed off the need for Obama to address lawmakers’ concerns about his nominee.
“I think that Senator Hagel’s record on those issues and so many others demonstrate that he is in sync with the president’s policies,” Carney said of Israel and Iran — both unmentioned by the president today.
It will be humorous to watch the news media tie themselves in knots trying to report on Obama’s clown posse.
Pubs: tell him to go eff himself!
It is at least 2 years too late, but , for God’s sake, man, have you NO self-respect?
He means to demolish and humiliate you. That used to call for a certain response.
Gen. McCauliffe: NUTS!
Leonidas: Molon Labe!
John Paul Frikken Jones: I have not yet BEGUN to fight!!
Are you all just simple milk-pussies? I have three cats, and they’d all be about tearing the Donkey’s lying balls from their a-holes at this point.
Should I send one to you,to assist you in locating the vicinity of your scrotum, and thus, your BALLS?
You seem to require their aid.
For instruction as to how REAL MEN comport themselves when confronted with scoundrels:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_Brooks
When we lost this, decent men lost their ability to turn back such horribly bad men.
Yes. The question du jour is no longer “Who is John Galt?” It’s “Where is Patrick Henry?”
@John J
You’ve got to be kidding. Sumner was speaking against slavery, the consummate evil of the 19th century. For this you call him a scoundrel??? Cite Patrick Henry(“give me liberty or give me death”, cite John Paul Jones(“I have not yet begun to fight”), cite David Farragut(“damn the torpedos, full speed ahead”)cite PFC Martin at the Battle of the Bulge(“I’m the 82nd Airborne, and this is as far as the bastards are going” but to cite this THUG as an example of principled manhood.
Give me a break!! Beating the hell out of your political opponents because he criticized your stance and ridiculed your friend. Preston Brooks would have fit in just fine with the SEIU thugs in Madison in 2011.
“You’ve got to be kidding. Sumner was speaking against slavery, the consummate evil of the 19th century.”
No, slavery is the consummate evil of the 20th and 21st centuries, not the 19th.
Many more people have been enslaved both as chattels and in the labor camps of totalitarian regimes in the 20th and 21st centuries than ever before.
Every other non-Muslim country except the US and Haiti managed to end slavery WITHOUT BLOODSHED in the 19th century.
Too bad it all came back.
But then, both Lincoln and Sumner were fanatical statists.
The only European columnist who supported Lincoln (and yes, he wrote in English!) was –
KARL MARX.
Funny how slavery only became a “consummate evil” after New Englanders made a deal to give it up if they could be compensated for their loss of human property. If it was such an evil, they could have cut a compensated emancipation deal with the states in which slavery was still legal (including, during the Civil War, a number of Union states). However, it was a greater concern for them to make New England all white, and pretend it always had been. That, and keeping the western territories “Free Soil for Free White Working Men.”
1389AD is correct: slavery died out peacefully in the rest of the West through a gradual process of attrition and compensated emancipation, with better results for the freed. Someone was micturating and moaning in the Sunday S.F. Chronicle this week about the evil slave trade sending large quantities of people to the deep South, when that was a result of more people in the upper tier of Southern states moving away from slavery.
Sumner and the Radical Republicans disenfranchised ex-Confederates while promoting the black vote only to gain a permanent majority in Congress. And we all know how well that turned out for the African-Americans they were supposedly liberating from evil.
There was a lot of 19th century consummate evil in how this country ended slavery, and how the politicians exploited that process and its results. Sumner was full of hate. Some people benefited, temporarily, from where he directed that hate, that’s all.
Seems this fight over his nominees helps everyone finish sweeping Benghazi right under that big old rug where he keeps sweeping his dirt. The bigger the fights, the more the LSM will cover this garbage instead of concentrating on what really happened that got those 4 Americans killed. Must be something awfully bad and troublesome for him to go to these lengths to put the distance between him and the road to Benghazi.
can we get that senator to repeat calling Obama a liar, only louder this time.
Does Hagel still worship at the Church of Hitler’s Dick?…inquiring minds want to know
No doubt he does.
Especially since both Hagel and Hitler hated both Jews and Serbs.
I haven’t forgotten the 1990s.
In a nomination that was as much about President Obama thumbing his nose at Senate opponents of a Susan Rice nomination as it was about putting on a “bipartisan” display.
Exactly. Look, putting in Hillary at Secretary of State was no better than having that cowardly scare crow Kerry, well, we’ll see, I guess. Rice would have been yet another step down. Hagel has a reputation as a personal/personnel bully, exactly the wrong kind of person to put in as SecDef no matter WHAT his political opinions. Is a SecDef supposed to HAVE political opinions? The problem is Hagel seems to, ignorant, bigoted, maybe OK for a rifleman but NOT ok for someone overseeing the Pentagon.
This is Catch-22 come to life, General Scheisskopf. Maybe he’ll make all our troops form ranks and march out of Afghanistan.
—— The Nod of Chucky: Obama Takes Stab at Lawmakers Who Derailed Rice
I have no doubt at all that Obama is just as trivial as that. Our nation is now, officially, a joke. We, The People, are no longer a serious polity. The only change for that, so far as I can see, is pain: severe, widely-felt, PAIN.
One thing we don’t need to worry about with our Dear Leader, Chuck Hagel notwithstanding, is a military-backed coup of the U.S. Constitution, because our troops hate this S.O.B.
Obama is not a leader. Obama is not an executive. Obama is not a negotiator.
Obama is an agitator and organizer…stoking passions and depending on others to execute the game plan he facilitates.
Only possible with the aid of a complicit and corrupt media.
“commitment to consensus,”
Just his very choice of words should send shivers up anyone’s spine. I hope that this resistance by the Senate is real and not just what some would call posturing. I am fearful of Obama’s requirement for consensus and Hagel’s need to supply it.
Aye, see it now. Kid gloves for Rice, and TKO gloves for female presidential contenders.
Stick to basketball, welterweight.
What kind of deep and profound “mental instability” would a man have to be possessed with to furnish Murderous Mexican Drug Gangs with thousands of assault weapons, used to murder hundreds of people, including children, and then pretend that he didn’t know anything about it? Should such a highly disturbed and heartless killer who belongs in a Mexican prison serving a life sentence be allowed to have any control of guns whatsoever? I think not, at least in a sane world.
Sandy Hook is the slaughter the fascist killer was trying to achieve with his Operation Fast and Furious. He needed people murdered with guns he could tie to America. His problem is that although he achieved the slaughter he wanted, hundreds of dead Mexicans, including scores of children, he lost control of the narrative and had to slither back into the dark for a while when Jaime Zapata’s murder threw a monkey wench in his cold blooded scheme. Now with the bodies of the children of Sandy Hook, he thinks his dream has come true and his “strangulation by regulation” can be jammed down our throats, at least he figures so anyway. In Herr Hussein Obama we have our First American Tyrant.
Why is anyone suprised? It seems most people here KNEW that the 2nd term would be a ram-rodding of the leftist agenda.
Now, what to do about it?
Hey. Could be worse. Drudge is reporting that Obama was seriously considering Paul Krugman for Treasury Secretary to replace Tim Geithner.
With a delicious but unintentional sense of irony, Krugman considered the job beneath him and took his name out of the running.
Cardin and all the other “pro-Israel” (Ha!) Democrats will cave on Hagel. All the Republicans have to do is count votes and then pretend to oppose Hagel once they know he’s in.