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" There are a number of reasons why the nomination of Chuck Hagel to be the next Secretary Of Defense may hit the rocks \u2014 however temporarily \u2014 over the next couple of days, and almost all of them have to do with the rolling carnival of dysfunction within which the Republican party apparently feels most comfortable. By comparison, there is resistance to Hagel on the Democratic side, too, mostly among liberals who question why the president feels it necessary always to nominate a Republican to that post, and among defense wonks who favor Michele Flournoy, a former undersecretary of Defense. But none of that is in any way a dealbreaker. No Democrat is threatening to block Hagel&amp;#039;s nomination on the grounds that, for example, we don&amp;#039;t know what FDR knew in advance of the Pearl Harbor attack, or the still-open questions about the Gulf Of Tonkin incident, or the full details of any other overseas debacle that, like Benghazi, BENGHAZI!, BENGHAZI1, happened while Hagel was not in the government, and before his nomination. In the case of Lindsey Graham, the nomination is in trouble because Graham wants to be a pest, because he has spent a career meddling with the reputations of other politicians, and because there is an actual movement afoot back in South Carolina based on the notion that Huckleberry Closetcase is not conservative enough to represent the home office of American sedition. In the case of John McCain, the nomination is in trouble because of something someone else said once on The Sunday Showz, which, around the McCain ranch, have the same force and effect of the Constitutional Convention or the Council of Chalcedon. It is also in trouble because the country may have forgotten to recognize the importance of John McCain for a millisecond after it decided that he shouldn&amp;#039;t be president, which is another reason, now that I think about it. In the case of James Inhofe, the nomination is in trouble because Inhofe is a rube and a yahoo who&amp;#039;s ascended to seniority in the congressional Republican party because being a rube and a yahoo is a good career move. In the case of Ted Cruz, the nomination is in trouble because Cruz, who possesses a degree from Harvard Law School, has decided that being a peckerwood Joe McCarthy is an ever better career move than being a rube and a yahoo. And, in the case of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the nomination is in trouble because he has had to let the carnival set up shop all around him because he is afraid of both the same primary challenge back in Kentucky that makes Graham nervous about South Carolina, and because McConnell also prefers meddling to governing, and because he is also afraid of the political potential of Ashley Judd. Step right up. Three throws for a dollar. The Republicans have shown no sign that they believe their public dysfunction hurts them. They wallow in it. They bring it right up from the cellar, shine it up, and leave it in the middle of living room for the entertainment of their guests. They take it for a walk around Capitol Hill. They have created from it a political identity with which they are more than comfortable. They have shown no sign that they regard making the national-security policy of the country hostage to the ranting incoherence of Jim Inhofe, or the wounded self-regard of John McCain, or the electoral night-sweats of Lindsey Graham, as anything less than the fullest exercise of their responsibility. And, even if they do manage to lose enough people on the margins to allow Hagel&amp;#039;s nomination to slide through, there&amp;#039;s no indication that they intend to stop using him as a pinata, or that they intend to rein in the wilder members of their caucus, even if McConnell could do it, which he can&amp;#039;t. There&amp;#039;s a lot of buzz in the saloons along the docks of Blogistan about how the whole Hagel mess is the result of chickens returning to the roost as a result of the deal Harry Reid cut that maintained the primary elements of the filibuster against the efforts of other Democrats to reform it. This is partly true, as the latest blithering from Inhofe makes quite clear: &amp;quot;I want a 60-vote margin and you don&amp;#039;t have to filibuster to get that,&amp;quot; said Inhofe in an interview on Fox News. &amp;quot;I would threaten to cause a 60-vote margin. If it took a filibuster, I&amp;#039;d do it that way...They are predicating it on the assumption that we haven&amp;#039;t been doing it. In the last nine years we&amp;#039;ve done it nine times; some of them have been confirmed some have not. I don&amp;#039;t see anything wrong with 60-vote margin with any of the two most significant jobs, appointments that the president has.&amp;quot; See? It&amp;#039;s not a filibuster even though Inhofe is demanding that Hagel receive the same number of votes as his nomination would need to break a filibuster. It seems that, implicitly, and with unintentional irony, Inhofe is defining a &amp;quot;filibuster&amp;quot; the same way the reformers defined it \u2014 as a device by which people actually have to get up and hold the floor of the Senate for as long as they can. But I&amp;#039;m not sure that the performance of the Republicans in this episode isn&amp;#039;t the best argument yet for keeping the status quo. If they one day assume control of the Senate, do we really want the Republicans as they are presently constituted to be able to pass anything they want by simple majority vote? (And, of course, if the reforms had gone through, we would have to watch Inhofe talk for 20 hours or something, and I&amp;#039;m not sure the collective intelligence of the human race is up to that.) This is your Republican party \u2014 a collection of inchoate grievances, energized by a collection of cheapjack tactics, and all in service of a political philosophy that&amp;#039;s falling to sticks and splinters around them. Chuck Hagel is merely the latest, and most convenient, victim. The use of dysfunction as a political tactic is the worst kind of solipsism. And these people call the president a narcissist? Yoicks. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a19555/the-hagel-end-game/?src=rss>