Breaking Reagan's 11th Commandment over Chuck Hagel's head?
(When Republicans must attack other Republicans.)
By Mark Kilmer Posted in Republicans — Comments (28) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
"Let's say I believe firmly in Ronald Reagan's 11th commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican," Cheney said. "But it's very hard sometimes to adhere to that where Chuck Hagel is involved."
There is no cause for concern, Mr. Vice President.
(Read More....)
Before it became popularly known as "Reagan's Eleventh Commandment," TIME Magazine called it also, "Parkinson's Law," for then-chair of the California GOP Gaylord Parkinson, whose notion it was.
It was 1966, and the Republican Party's previous Presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater, had been trounced two years earlier in part because liberal Republicans tossed an ideological fit and handed the election to LBJ by an embarrassing margin. (The argument is that it would have been closer had the GOP stuck together.)
Parkinson was looking to beat Governor Edmund "Pat" Brown, a Democrat and Moonbeam's daddy, but he and his party was faced with a tough primary between a conservative, Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan, and a lefty, former San Francisco Mayor George Christopher. (The magazine refers to Christopher as an "equally outspoken champion of Nelson Rockefeller.") Not wanting a repeat of what happened to Goldwater in '64, down came Gaylord's write: "Thou shall not speak ill of any Republican."
So the Republicans concentrated on Brown. The Democrats did not have an Eleventh Commandment; instead, they had a problem:
In their attacks on Brown, few Republicans can outshout Los Angeles' Mayor Samuel Yorty, 56, who hopes to win the Democratic nomination. Unembarrassed by his own record of nonaccomplishment, Yorty has outraged most Democrats with irresponsible charges that Brown has sought and received Communist backing, is given little hope of an upset.
Today, perhaps Yorty might accuse Brown of having attended a madrasa as a young man.
Either way, the TIME article linked was written in May of 1966, before even the State party's primaries. They did not know how events would play out, and the thought of the "[a]ctor Ronald Reagan, a fervent supporter of Barry Goldwater in 1964," sitting in the White House fifteen-years later would have probably caused convulsions.
In his autobiography, An American Life, Reagan wrote:
My principal opponent in the primary was George Christopher, a former mayor of San Francisco who tried simultaneously to portray me as a right-wing extremist and attack me because I'd admitted having been in Communist front groups - without mentioning that I'd resigned and declared war on them as soon as I'd realized what they were.
The personal attacks against me during the primary finally became so heavy that the state Republican chairman, Gaylord Parkinson, postulated what he called the Eleventh Commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican. It's a rule I followed during that campaign and have ever since.
That is background. Now, the Associated Press gives us this: Cheney Nearly Breaks Reagan's 11th Commandment.
Vice President Dick Cheney shot back at Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, who has accused the Bush administration of playing "a pingpong game with American lives" by sending more U.S. troops into Iraq.
"Let's say I believe firmly in Ronald Reagan's 11th commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican," Cheney said. "But it's very hard sometimes to adhere to that where Chuck Hagel is involved."
Cheney's comments came in a Newsweek interview released Sunday. It is his first interview since the GOP lost control of Congress in November.
Hagel, a potential presidential candidate, has been outspoken in his criticism that the Republican White House lacks a coherent strategy in Iraq.
His "pingpong" remark came Wednesday as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee debated a nonbinding resolution that condemned Bush's troop buildup in Iraq. Hagel co-sponsored the measure, which the committee approved in a 12-9 vote.
But Hagel was the only Republican to vote for it.
The Veep is not in danger of violating Reagan's Eleventh Commandment. It was not an edict from President Reagan that no Republican should criticize the actions of another, no matter how awful. The Eleventh Commandment was the creation of the California party apparatus designed to prevent the party's eventual candidate from losing because of Republican attacks. Our nation is at war, and the primary season is a year away.
I am not violating the Eleventh Commandment when I point out that Chuck Hagel is either a Presidential candidate looking for a bizarre niche or a lost soul looking for Vietnam under rocks with the rest of the retrograde neo-hippies. Either way, he is a fool.
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Breaking Reagan's 11th Commandment over Chuck Hagel's head? 28 Comments (0 topical, 28 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
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"As nations can not be rewarded or punished in the next world they must be in this."
- George Mason
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If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"...
Senior Writer
"Who will stand/On either hand/And guard this bridge with me?" (Macaulay)
Hagel is the new McCain, since McCain can't be McCain.
I was going to ask what political benefit accrues to the WH by having Cheney go on Wolf Blitzer and in Newsweek to make these kind of inflammatory statements that take away from the more important things he says in the interview. Don't get me wron, I love the Veep, but I was wondering what was the strategy behind the sudden Cheney eruption in the press.
Reading the first comments to this story gave me my answer.
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Develop alternatives to existing policies and keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable. Milton Friedman
Depending on whose support you're eliciting, maybe the question then becomes whether it really amounts to a "political benefit."
he would have received a standing "O" for that comment, and half of the state would spontaneoulsy begin construction of the Deer Creek dam and then rename it the Hagel Dam.
(For those of you who don't know, there was a 20 year court battle between Nebraska and Wyoming over whether Wyoming would be allowed to build a dam on the North Platte river which runs into Nebraska. The ag folks in NE had a fit saying that we would choke their ag industry in western NE and Wyoming eventually lost the case in front of the SCOTUS. Our ag folks in southeast Wyoming have suffered a little ever since.)
to get away with falling under the umbrella of not attacking a fellow Republican. Chuck Hagel? not quite sure what he is however I would not call either him or Specter a Republican.
Peace through superior fire power:)
Hagel is definitely a RINO
"A free people ought to be armed" - George Washington
Is Hagel trying to be like Lieberman? A guy who likes to court the other side, and may bolt the party at any moment. The difference is, of course, that Chuck is loved by the MSM, while Joe has become a bit of a pariah in the Cocktail Party Circuit.
Nov 7, 2006 was a day of shame for those who sat out. You let KOS win.
See Goldwater's 1964 acceptance speech. http://americanrhetoric.com/speeches/barrygoldwater1964rnc.htm
Before uttering his famous lines, he said the following:
"Anyone who joins us in all sincerity, we welcome. Those who do not care for our cause, we don't expect to enter our ranks in any case. And -- And let our Republicanism, so focused and so dedicated, not be made fuzzy and futile by unthinking and stupid labels."
Was this guy serious about rallying his party, let alone getting a majority of the votes?
"People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors." -Edmund Burke
Chuck Hagel. You can say you don't like Chuck Hagel's stance on the Iraq War. But calling him a 'RINO' or a liberal, or an Arlen Specter is just plain silly.
Here are the ACU Ratings for likely Republican Presidential candidates:
(First number below is the ACU lifetime rating. Second number is rating from 2005.)
Representative Tom Tancredo (CO) 99 100
Senator Sam Brownback (KS) 95 100
Senator George Allen (VA) 92 100
Representative Duncan Hunter (CA) 92 92
Former Speaker Newt Gingrich (GA) 90 N/A
Senator Chuck Hagel (NE) 86 96
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (TN) 89 92
Senator John McCain (AZ) 83 80
I don't think a lifetime ACU rating of 86 is the mark of a liberal. And given a 2005 rating of 96, I'd say Hagel is among the more conservative members of the Senate on many issues.
Will I support Hagel? No, but I'm also not going to call him a liberal or a RINO. Specter has a lifetime rating of 45. There is a huge difference between 45 and 86, don't you think?
Well, if Hagel isn't a liberal and he isn't crazy (the two charges leveled here), then isn't just possible that he disagrees with the policy? If so, then deal with the substance of his criticisms of the policy.
Or, just resume the same kind of silly labeling and name calling that we criticize so severely when done by PC-blinded lefty college students.
In fact she had many good things to say about him in a piece entitled "He's Got Guts - In praise of Chuck Hagel" that appeared last Friday in The Wall Street Journal. Here's an excerpt:
But Mr. Hagel said the most serious thing that has been said in Congress in a long time. This is what we're here for. This is why we're here, to decide, to think it through and take a stand, and if we can't do that, why don't we just leave and give someone else a chance?
Mr. Hagel has shown courage for a long time. He voted for the war resolution in 2002 but soon after began to question how it was being waged. This was before everyone did. He also stood against the war when that was a lonely place to be. Senate Democrats sat back and watched: If the war worked, they'd change the subject; and if it didn't, they'd hang it on President Bush. Republicans did their version of inaction; they supported the president until he was unpopular, and then peeled off. This is almost not to be criticized. It's what politicians do. But it's not what Mr. Hagel did. He had guts.
I now await numerous accusations that Peggy Noonan is a hopeless liberal, RINO, etc., because, after all, what else could she be with this take on events?
Just a RiNO.
Personally, I don't particularly care whether you're upset about that or not; or whether or not it's fair to categorize him - or any other Republican against the war - as same. But I will note this, idly and in passing: nobody here is obliged to accept your definitions of liberal, conservative, RiNO or anything else.
Just in case you felt like presuming. :)
Moe
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.
No one has to accept my definition of liberal, conservative, or anything of the kind. But if the ACU rating on a pol is 86 for his lifetime, then why is he is a RINO?
Because he doesn't like the handling of the war in Iraq? Because he doesn't support the surge as policy?
That's a RINO? As a party, what matters now isn't abortion, or taxes, or gun rights, or fiscal conservative, everything now boils down to blind support for President Bush on Iraq?
So what is the definition of a RINO, then, according to you?
You've been around these parts long enough to know that you should think harder than you are.
...everything now boils down to blind support for President Bush on Iraq?
There is a huge difference between "blind support for President Bush" and co-sponsoring a resolution undermining the war effort. There is a whole spectrum of things to do and say between those extremes, from cautious support to bitter criticism.
And in the middle of those extremes is keeping your mouth shut, when we're at war and you aren't the Commander in Chief.
To your larger point: yes, I think the survival of our civilization trumps just about everything. Abortion is evil; taxes, the RKBA and small government are things to be watched.
But the War on Terror is the battle of our generation, our Abolition, our Hitler, our Communism. Because if we lose the other battles, we can move someplace else; lose the War on Terror, and we cannot.
The Academy: researching the Illiberal Arts
I don't use the term. [More accurately, I don't use the term as a slur. I've been known to call myself one, in what was pretty much a futile effort to highlight its shortcomings as a debate tool.]
The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC.
But criticism of Chuck Hagel is justified and these indeces are all pretty silly.
Hagel tends to come out as quite 'right wing' on these measures because foreign affairs issues come up for a vote far less frequently than economic and domestic affairs. If votes were weighted, such that economic, social and foreign affairs all had an equal weighting in the scale I think he would emerge much further to the 'left'.
Quentin Langley
Editor of http://www.quentinlangley.net
International Editor of
If you subtract one point from every Congressman's ACU rating for the year for each glowing quote they receive in the New York Times that year, I'm sure Hagel's score would go negative.
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Internet member since 1987
Member of the Surreality-Based Community
When are Republicans going to wake up and acknowledge the clear reality that Cheney is a big part of the problem, and not part of the solution?
We will be able to start making real progress on reclaiming the Republican party for Republican principles when Cheney retires.
Cheney is mean. Sometimes wet behind the ears whelps confuse meanness with toughness; it's not at all the same.
Hagel might or might not be wrong on Iraq, but he's way more of a conservative than Bush or Cheney, and it would be idiotic to purge conservatives like Hagel just because they have the courage and principle to stand up for what they believe.
If you answer bloviating and political grandstanding then yeah, I will buy that. I do not see those characteristics as courageous and principled. He is a co-author with Biden on a non-binding resolution that says it is not in the nation's best interest to send additional troops for a General that he and everone else present approved of and has told them that he needs these extra troops for his plans to be successful. Hagel is just full of himself, and he can say enough empty words in a non-binding resolution to prove it. A man of principle and courage would try to cut off all of the money for the Iraq conflict if he were against it. Guys like Hagel and Biden want to have their cake and eat it too. I am not buying it.
You’re a persistent cuss, pilgrim.
John Wayne to Jimmy Stewart in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
He been called RINO, CRAZY, LIBERAL and GUTSY. OH WELL........
WHO CARES what he is CALLED as long as we can CALL him GONE...........in the next election!!
jaszkowski, Hagel may vote with the conservatives 80-something percent of the time. But that doesn't excuse him from "piling on" the president, in conjunction with the liberal media and other anti-America elements, at a time when the president has already taken a beating.
Hagel needs to understand that his rhetoric resonates as much as his voting record.
Kerry/Hagel.
Senior Writer
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If "pro" is the opposite of "con", what is the opposite of "progress"...