Saturday, March 24, 2007

Is Hagel a "Conservative Turned Liberal?"

Here's a comment I got via e-mail from Mike earlier today:


I'm sure in the beginning Mr. Hagel was a nice man.

But come on, a candidate for REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT.

I see in many polls that Hagel hasn't even reached 1%, now boy that is funny. Sorry, but conservative, turned liberal won't make it with the middle class informed Americans.

OK - so in response to this I'd like to direct you to some statistics that Senator Hagel points out on his website:

Conservative Voting Records . . .

Senator Hagel has one of the most solid conservative voting records in the U.S. Senate. The following are his lifetime ratings from some important organizations:

Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) 94% (1997 - 2006)
U.S. Chamber of Commerce 96% (1997 - 2005)
American Conservative Union (ACU) 85.2% (1997 - 2006)
National Taxpayers Union 75% (1997 - 2005)
National Right to Life Committee 96.4% (2000 - 2006)
National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) 100% (1999-2006)
Club for Growth 99% (2005)


Hagel's Support of President Bush's Priorities in the Senate

2006 95.5% (highest of GOP Members in Senate)
2005 89%
2004 94%
2003 98%
2002 98%
2001 96%

Source: Congressional Quarterly, January 2007

So basically - the only liberal part about him is his stance on the Iraq War.

2 comments:

Charlie said...

I wanted to point out that Chuck Hagel's position on the Iraq war is not liberal. He does find himself siding with liberals, but also conservatives. The war in Iraq goes against the traditionally conservative foreign policy that the Republican party stood for (during the Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Bush 41 administrations).

Nathan said...

I disagree - you had Eisenhower who was able to successfully end the Korean War, Reagan who would have used military force against Iran - and did against Lybia, and Bush went in to Iraq (but didn't "finish the job").

Nixon withdrew because at that point we just had to get out of Vietnam, and Ford didn't really do anything.

This being said - we have to remember that "conservativism" changes based on culture and world events.

Also - Hagel is not as radical as the Democrats. They want a set date where BAM! we're out - Hagel is rational in his plan and knows that we can't just jump out on X Date.