Santorum takes up fight against Hagel nomination
Source: AP
BY BY DONNA CASSATA, ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum is launching an effort to defeat the nomination of Chuck Hagel to head the Defense Department.
Santorum is a former Senate colleague of Hagel’s and a fellow Republican. He says in a statement that Hagel’s, quote, “anti-Israel, pro-Iran mindset” makes him unqualified for the Pentagon job.
President Barack Obama nominated Hagel on Monday, but he has faced strong opposition from Senate Republicans. Santorum recently led a successful fight to defeat a U.N. treaty on the disabled, convincing several Senate Republicans to oppose ratification.
Supporters of Hagel’s nomination are also lobbying on his behalf. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell will appear on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday to argue for the nominee
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Read more: http://www.salon.com/2013/01/10/santorum_takes_up_fight_against_hagel_nomination/
= new reply since forum marked as read
Apparently he refuses to shut-up when he disagrees with the party so the right-wingers also think he is a prick. That makes me laugh and gesture in their general direction.
The campaign now being waged against Mr. Hagel’s nomination as secretary of defense is in some ways a relitigation of that decade-old dispute. It is also a dramatic return to the public stage by the neoconservatives whose worldview remains a powerful undercurrent in the Republican Party and in the national debate about the United States’ relationship with Israel and the Middle East.
“This is the neocons’ worst nightmare because you’ve got a combat soldier, successful businessman and senator who actually thinks there may be other ways to resolve some questions other than force,” said Richard L. Armitage, who broke with the more hawkish members of the Bush team during the Iraq war when he was a deputy to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.
William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, who championed the Iraq invasion and is leading the opposition to Mr. Hagel’s nomination, says the former senator and his supporters are suffering from “neoconservative derangement syndrome.”
“I’d much prefer a secretary of defense who was a more mainstream internationalist — not a guy obsessed by how the United States uses its power and would always err on the side of not intervening,” he added. Of Mr. Hagel and his allies, Mr. Kristol said, “They sort of think we should have just gone away.” 
Kristol seriously just shut up you are exposing your foolishness
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/us/old-foes-lead-charge-against-chuck-hagel.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0&hp
as described by the Philadelphia Inquirer. 
