Redstate

that anyone takes Hagel seriously. And he must really think his party is stupid. The man is a boob.

You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.

This blowhard is relly full of himself. I know of not a single person who waited with baited breath to listen to his announcement. That the media are indulging him is only because he speaks against his own party and the president. He is irrelevant.

Think of all the press people now spending time in Nebraska.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

Hagel as a candidate=little money, few supporters, bad polling.

Hagel as a possible candidate=media buzz and visibility without having to raise money, have supporters, or fare well in polls.

"No compromise with the main purpose, no peace till victory, no pact with unrepentant wrong." - Winston Churchill

but this hardly makes him any different (or more ridiculous) than fully half the field of presidential candidates this cycle. It would seem stranger by now if a maybe candidate didn't hold a presser to say they were considering whether to consider a run at the White House.

I would love to see the look on his face when he got <1% in the primary (if he made it that far).

He's basically saying, keep tearing apart the announced early candidates and find reasons why they aren't worthy until a prohibitive minority won't vote for any of them, and they've run through a lot of the money they'd get from early supporters. Then when you start talking about shining knights to save the party from the intercine warfare, hey, Hagel hasn't ruled out joining the race, let's talk about him.

Gore is doing the same thing on the other side.

I disagree that Kerry's announcement should be compared with Chuck Hagel's non-announcement. Kerry answered a question that may have been on the minds of many Democrats -- would Kerry continue to pretend that he had any justification for running or any chance of winning the nomination? As the former choice of the party, Kerry stood to be a much greater distraction than he would have been had he been just another unpopular candidate. Taking himself out of a hopeless race tidied things up, if only slightly, for Democrats.

Hagel's non-announcement just looks like a ploy to garner attention. If the situation in Iraq is going badly later this year -- and there is still significant dissatisfaction with the other candidates -- Hagel might see an opening and join the fray. But if Iraq is coming around, what traction could a Republican anti-war candidate expect to get? Hagel answered -- actually didn't answer -- a question virtually no one was asking.

Who would really make a decent U.S. Senate replacement for Hagel for the Republicans?