WASHINGTON, May 13 (Bloomberg News) — Senator Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, said Sunday that his party had “been hijacked by a group of single-minded, almost isolationist insulationists, power-projectors.”
“I am not happy with the Republican Party today,” Mr. Hagel said on “Face the Nation” on CBS. “It has drifted from the party of Eisenhower, of Goldwater, of Reagan, the party that I joined. It isn’t the same party.”
Senator Hagel, who said “a credible third-party candidate” for president would benefit the United States, said he planned to decide by late summer whether to run for president. “I think it shakes the system up,” he said of a third-party or independent candidacy. “The system needs to be shaken up.”
“I think we’re living today at the most unpredictable political time in modern history,” Mr. Hagel said, adding that Americans needed “some new, fresh, independent ideas to lead this country forward.”
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Hagel would be a powerful independent candidate.... more powerful than Ross Perot. His only problem would be raising funds, which is what campaigns are all about these days. Money would be hard to come by for a candidate who is not tied to one of the two major political parties.
If he enters the race as an independent, it would set the 2008 election on fire. Republicans are probably in a panic right now and will surely try to talk Hagel out of running. This could be a ploy by Hagel to establish leverage and influence his Party on issues such as Iraq, immigration reform, and Veterans affairs. Republicans would be concerned because any independent run by Hagel could draw massive amounts of votes away from the Republican candidate in a general election, which would allow Democrats to walk right into the White House, with room to spare.
Of course the Dems would love this....and will probably want to talk him into running.
I hope he gives it a shot. Not necessarily because it would help the Democrats (they are the lesser of two evils). But because I am tired of seeing the system dominated by the two major Parties. I wish Hagel would go farther and try to establish a 3rd and 4th Party. The occasional Ross Perot, Ralph Nader type run is not enough. Until additional political Parties are actually formed and become major Parties that can rival the two main Parties, the system will continue to fall short of true Democracy.
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Report with more details from CBS
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1 comment:
I thoroughly agree with the notion of third and fourth parties to balance out the democratic process. However, the difficulties third parties face in getting off the ground, enacting campaigns, let alone winning office make for a tremendous uphill climb against tremendous odds. Third parties do exist in the US right now but they can't get enough traction to make a dent in the two-party system. Check out my blog post here regarding the conondrum of third party politics.
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