One dinnertime chat does not a ticket make, though it would certainly confirm my impression that Chuck Hagel is less a principled anti-war conservative than an unprincipled attention-whore. (And I say this as someone who would like to see a principled anti-war conservative in the ’08 race – and one who’s a little more plausible than Ron Paul.)  ~Ross Douthat

I was going to write about this earlier today, but for a moment my inspiration departed from me when I thought: continuing to talk about this tiresome politician is exactly what he wants, and I don’t feel like giving Hagel what he wants.  Then I thought over it a little more after seeing Ross’ post and decided I would add a couple remarks, if only to drive home for the last time why I don’t much care for Hagel. 

Ross is absolutely right about Hagel.  Hagel is not a principled antiwar conservative.  He isn’t an unprincipled antiwar conservative.  He’s not an antiwar conservative, period, since he would have to oppose the war to be against it, as I have been saying for some time.  On some things (e.g., immigration), he’s not all that terribly conservative, while we’re at it, but that’s not the point.  He has been doing all this because he wants attention.  Does he have some strong reservations and objections to the way Mr. Bush has run the war?  Sure.  As an internationalist realist hawk, he is bound to be upset at seeing internationalist hawkishness discredited as badly as Iraq has discredited it.  That doesn’t mean that he is the tribune of the antiwar right or antiwar voters generally.  I am no longer of the mind that he might be an acceptable, more electable “compromise” candidate for antiwar voters.  Playing footsie with Bloomberg, who would be obnoxious to the right for all the reasons Giuliani is and who has no obvious or prominent foreign policy position of any kind, is the ultimate pursuit of media chatter for its own sake.

I would say something in defense of the “plausibility” of Ron Paul.  Ron Paul is a good candidate who holds policy views that are, unfortunately, not shared by probably 70-85% of his party (I’m probably being generous in putting it so low).  He is not a “plausible” candidate as an antiwar conservative/libertarian because it is not possible to be against the Iraq war and be politically viable at any important level in the Republican Party today.  Asking for a more plausible antiwar conservative than Ron Paul is to ask that the internal politics of the GOP were radically different, that the vast majority of conservative voters was not deeply inured to a failed policy and that the overwhelming majority of conservative pundits and activists did not vehemently demonise any and all conservatives (including Hagel and even Brownback) who strayed from the party line on Iraq even a little.  I sympathise with wanting all these things, because I want them, too.  I would also like a palatial villa in Tuscany and a summer home in the Alps, but it aint happening, and the reason why it isn’t happening in the GOP primaries hasn’t got anything to do with Ron Paul himself.