Will Hagel Run as an Independent?

The Real Clear Politics Blog has posted the following quote from Senator Hagel:

Q: Would you give any consideration to running as an Independent?
HAGEL:
Well, if I seek the Presidency, I would seek it as a Republican. Where all this
is going to go and how it ends up next year, whether that's possible for an
Independent to be elected President, maybe. Maybe it would be. But, right now,
I'd be focused on seeking the Republican nomination.

Hagel Talks Up Third-Party '08 Bid

Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska is keeping his options open as he considers a run for the presidency.

As a Republican, he would be primarily interested in the GOP nomination. But if that isn't a realistic possibility, he'd be open to running on a hybrid ticket with a Democrat.

"If I decide to get into this, I would run not just to make a statement," Hagel, 60, said in a recent interview, according to USA Today.

The third-party option is known as Unity08, in which bipartisan political operatives use the Internet to craft a Republican-Democratic presidential ticket.

"I think it's a very intriguing enterprise," Hagel told USA Today, adding that he thinks most Americans are unhappy with the GOP and Democrats.

Hagel has become a critic of President Bush's foreign policy, although he voted in October 2002 for the authorization to go to war in Iraq.

Hagel says a troop surge in Iraq will result in "a vat of chaos." He also says America is letting its chance of winning over a "pro-American generation" of young Iranians slip away.

Such outspokenness has angered the administration. Vice President Dick Cheney told Newsweek magazine: "I believe firmly in Ronald Reagan's '11th Commandment': Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican. But it's very hard sometimes to adhere to that where Chuck Hagel is involved."


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Newsweek: McCain vs. Hagel

There is an excellent piece from Newsweek about the differing views on the war between two close friends in the Senate: John McCain and Chuck Hagel. These are two men who are both thinking about running for President in 2008 and are two of the few combat veterans in Congress. They have long been close friends, but are nearly polar opposites on Iraq.

Hagel is "obsessed" with the war in Iraq, says his brother Tom, who served with him in Vietnam. "You can't have a conversation with him without this coming up." During Christmas, Hagel looked "markedly older and grayer than when I saw him this summer down at the beach," says Tom. In an interview with NEWSWEEK last week, Hagel teared up when he began talking about a Purple Heart ceremony he had attended in August in Lincoln, Neb. "You're sitting there thinking, Was this a waste?" said Hagel, who voted for the original congressional resolution backing the war despite raising serious doubts about whether the invasion made sense. He added, somewhat uncomfortably, that at times he wonders whether he has done enough to try to stop the war.

Hagel is not pushing for "Out Now." But he is almost angrily dismissive of the idea of sending an additional 10,000 to 20,000 troops to Iraq. "Are we going to pacify Baghdad?" he asks. "Are we going to break the militia's stronghold? Are we going to use these troops to propel or force a settlement between the Shias and the Sunnis? What's the objective of it? I will guarantee that there's going to be a lot more American casualties. And there's going to be a lot more animosity by the Iraqis." The idea that the Iraqis will respond only to more troops, he says, is "complete folly, unless you're going to kill all the Iraqis."

Read the full article here.