OH, GOOD, MORE NANNY-STATERS IN THE RACE: Bloomberg & Hagel talking about a third-party run? Hagel’s got no GOP support, and Bloomberg is just Rudy Giuliani without Rudy’s virtues. I can’t imagine that they’d pull many Republican votes — my guess is they’d hurt the Democrats more, but I think that they’re unlikely to catch fire with very many people regardless, as neither has much in the way of charisma.

UPDATE: TigerHawk: “Good news for the Republicans, I would say. In particular, the regular running of advertisements with Hagel’s profoundly incorrect predictions about ‘the surge’ (‘This is a dangerously wrong-headed strategy that will drive America deeper into an unwinnable swamp at a great cost… We cannot escape the reality that there will be no military solution in Iraq’) should both interdict Republican defections to Bloomberg and promote Democratic ones.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Hagel kiss of death?