For the past few months, while he has virtually been crowned Antiwar Republican Demigod by certain enthusiasts, I have complained that Chuck Hagel said a lot of promising-sounding things but never actually did anything.  Well, okay, he is at least doing something now.  It isn’t much, and it doesn’t reflect a foreign policy vision all that terribly different from the rest of his party (the divergence from which may be an unreasonable expectation on my part), but it is something.  Robert Novak reports his recent conversation with Hagel, who continues to describe a deteriorating situation in Iraq, and Novak concludes by saying:

Hagel represents millions of Republicans who are repelled by the Democrats’ personal assault on President Bush but are deeply unhappy about his course in Iraq.

I suppose I have a hard time understanding antiwar Hagel admirers because I have a hard time understanding the thinking behind the position Novak has described here.  This sentence seems to say: Hagel represents millions of Republicans who are deeply confused.  This might be an accurate statement of political reality, but it is hardly the image of Chuck “Taking A Stand” Hagel that this column is supposed to show.  The bumper sticker slogan does not make the heart leap: “Vote Hagel–he’s just as confused and ambivalent about Iraq as you are!”  Think about this for a moment.  If you are deeply unhappy about a very important policy, and the President from your party is the main supporter and advocate of that policy and seems completely oblivious to the damage it is doing to country and party, shouldn’t you be very annoyed with the President?  Shouldn’t you want a “personal assault” (politically speaking) on such a person?  Shouldn’t you want the opposition to him to be as strong as it possibly can be?  Apparently not.  Apparently your tribune is Chuck “Go Sell Shoes” Hagel.

Meanwhile, House Republicans who bit the bullet and went on record in a nonbinding resolution opposing the “surge” have been met with contempt back home:

With public opinion tilting firmly toward ending U.S. involvement in the war in Iraq, Rep. Wayne T. Gilchrest (R-Md.) might have expected praise for his votes that would start to bring the troops home. Instead, at town hall meetings on the Eastern Shore, the former Marine and Vietnam combat veteran has been called a coward and a traitor.

Now it seems to me that the rather more cowardly thing most House members did was to vote against that resolution even though they knew it had no binding consequences and they knew that they would suffer politically with their core voters.  Unreasonable war supporters will be, well, unreasonable, but these folks have some nerve to call cowardly one of the few dissenters from the party line people like them impose on their representatives. 

But if there are indeed “millions of Republicans” who feel as Hagel does, why are there episodes like this one in eastern Maryland?  Either the “millions of Republicans” who share Hagel’s dissatisfaction with the war are quiescent and don’t attend town hall meetings, none of them lives in Gilchrest’s district in Maryland (which is one of the relatively more evenly-split, moderate Republican-held districts) or perhaps they are the sort who like to grumble about Mr. Bush’s war behind closed doors but don’t like anyone actually doing anything practical to register this opposition.  I have no idea.  I would very much like to know where these “millions of Republicans” are, because there do not seem to be very many who live in any Republican-held districts.  Could it be that the approximately 30% of Republicans opposed to the “surge” all live in districts represented by Democrats anyway?  Could war support among constituents of the GOP’s rump House caucus actually be substantially higher than the national Republican average?  Such a thing would be almost as baffling as it would be horrifying. 

The reaction in South Carolina was more predictable, because Bob Inglis’ district was always a lot more conventionally mainstream conservative (and therefore, I’m sorry to say, that much more easily propagandised by the idiocies of Hugh Hewitt and friends):

After Rep. Bob Inglis (R-S.C.) voted for a nonbinding resolution opposing President Bush’s troop increases, reaction in his district was so furious that local GOP officials all but invited a primary challenge to the reliable conservative. Inglis responded with multiple mailings to his constituents, fence-mending efforts and a video message on his House Web site pleading his case. On subsequent Iraq votes, he has not strayed from the Republican fold.   

Meanwhile, the alleged defeatist and peacenik Sam Brownback continues to make liars of his pro-war critics (a role to which they are presumably quite accustomed):

“This isn’t the way to go,” Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) said of the Democrats’ bill yesterday on ABC’s “This Week.” “This is assured defeat. Defeat will happen in America, not in Iraq. That’s not what the American people want.”

In light of the appalling overall conformity of GOP rank-and-file sentiment on the war, I suppose Hagel’s stand is rather more impressive than I usually admit.  He is coping with a political reality in the modern GOP that seems to beggar reason and common sense, and under the circumstances he has been reasonably consistent, albeit still pretty far from heroic Lawrence-esque “don’t give up the ship!” defiance.