Politics: Kristol vs. Hagel

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Politics Kristol vs. Hagel The neoconservative's campaign to stop Obama's Defense nominee is smaller than it looks, and it might have peaked. By David Weigel Posted Tuesday, Jan 08, 2013, at 06:15 PM ET Chuck Hagel's opponents mostly agree on this: Jan. 7 was the first and only decent day in his campaign to become Secretary of Defense. For one full month, ever since the former Republican senator's name was floated for the job, the unofficial anti-Hagel movement had controlled the headlines as deftly as J. Jonah Jameson. Everyone covering Hagel, or merely Googling him, knew that he called a 1998 ambassadorial nominee "aggressively gay" and that he'd boasted of besting the "Jewish lobby." But Monday went well for Hagel. Former Democratic Rep. Barney Frank, who wants to return to Congress via the Senate, reversed his noisy opposition to the nominee. Republican objections came off as little off-key, as when Sen. John Cornyn claimed Hagel had left the GOP when he "endorsed" Barack Obama. (Hagel never endorsed Obama, in 2008 or in 2012.) In the new nomination narrative, an aggressive White House was defending a war hero from Republicans who only opposed him out of spite. "The official nomination was a chance for [the White House] to finally push back a little bit," shrugs Michael Goldfarb, chairman of the Center for American Freedom, a neoconservative think tank founded one year ago as a counterweight to the progressive Center for American Progress. The CAF "war room" of half a dozen twentysomethings had rolled back the administration, but only for a few weeks. "They finally get to dominate the headlines for a day." Despite yesterday's comeback, the campaign against Hagel is a ... To continue reading, click here. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Argo, F--k Yourself What's Lost if the Voting Rights Act Falls? The Lesson of RGIII	Advertisement
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