Preview: Hagel’s Rough Confirmation Hearing

Jonathan Weisman and Jeff Zeleny on what SecDef nominee Chuck Hagel will be up against as the Senate holds confirmation hearings:

For a man who spent 12 years in the Senate, Chuck Hagel will find himself with few close allies when the Armed Services Committee takes up his nomination to be secretary of defense this month.

…

 Of the senators who will ultimately sit in judgment, 42 never served a day with Mr. Hagel. The ones who remain include powerful Republicans who clashed repeatedly with him over what was the singular issue of the time: the American invasion of Iraq and its bloody aftermath.

And in Washington, apostasy from within a party can leave far deeper scars than the routine clashes between the parties.

By: dave-dr-gonzo

David Hirsch, a.k.a. Dave "Doctor" Gonzo*, is a renegade record producer, video producer, writer, reformed corporate shill, and still-registered lobbyist for non-one-percenter performing artists and musicians. He lives in a heavily fortified compound in one of Manhattan's less trendy neighborhoods.

* Hirsch is the third person to use the pseudonym, a not-so-veiled tribute to journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson, with the permission of his predecessors Gene Gaudette of American Politics Journal (currently webmaster and chief bottlewasher at Liberaland) and Stephen Meese at Smashmouth Politics.