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President Barack Obama will nominate former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel for Defense Secretary to replace Leon Panetta, according to Democratic officials.

Politico predicts that “is likely to ignite a raucous confirmation battle.”

The AP meanwhile reports that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will be taking a wait and see [...]]]> via Lobe Log

President Barack Obama will nominate former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel for Defense Secretary to replace Leon Panetta, according to Democratic officials.

Politico predicts that “is likely to ignite a raucous confirmation battle.”

The AP meanwhile reports that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will be taking a wait and see approach to the nomination:

Sen. Mitch McConnell says that the next Pentagon chief must have a complete understanding of the U.S. relationship with ally Israel and the threat from Iran.

Some of Hagel’s former Senate colleagues have questioned his pronouncements on Iraq, Israel and the Middle East. McConnell tells ABC’s “This Week” that Hagel “has certainly been outspoken” on certain foreign policy matters.

McConnell says that if Hagel is nominated, he wants to see if the former Nebraska senator’s views “make sense for that particular job.”

But in May 2007, McConnell headlined two fundraisers for Hagel in downtown Omaha, praising him as “one of the premier foreign policy voices” and as “a man of extraordinary principle” who tells people what he really believes. McConnell lauded Hagel as a “solid, thoughtful, conservative Republican” whose voice is invaluable to the nation. Don Walton of the Nebraska Journal Star reported:

The tribute served as a vigorous response to Hagel critics who, as the Senate GOP leader phrased it, say that “somehow (Hagel) is not much of a Republican.”….

Hagel is “an indispensable member of the Republican team,” McConnell said. McConnell also “described Hagel as ‘a man of extraordinary principle’ who tells people what he really believes.

“It’s not spin,” he said. “It’s not calculated.” Hagel, he said, is “one of the premier foreign policy voices (and) one of the giants in the United States Senate.”

During an interview after the fundraiser, McConnell stated that many of Hagel’s warnings about the Iraq war had been vindicated:

“Many of the predictions Chuck Hagel made about the war came true,” the Kentucky senator said in a brief interview after his remarks at a fundraising reception. “They have proven to be accurate.”

Hagel’s views on the war “have not diminished his effectiveness,” McConnell said, and may, in fact, increase his effectiveness over time.

Walton explained that “Hagel warned against a U.S. attack against Iraq without broad international support and careful planning for the aftermath. Most recently, he has opposed President Bush’s increase in U.S. troops while supporting changes in the U.S. military mission and gradual withdrawal of most combat troops.”

Hagel ultimately decided not to run in 2008. Josh Rogin of Foreign Policy points out that Hagel’s Republican colleagues had only good things to say about him as they bade him farewell when he retired from the Senate, including McConnell:

“In two terms in the Senate, Chuck has earned the respect of his colleagues and risen to national prominence as a clear voice on foreign policy and national security,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). “He has consistently fought to expand free trade, particularly with Vietnam. Chuck’s stature as a leading voice in foreign affairs has earned him a reputation, in just 12 years in the Senate, as one of Nebraska’s great statesmen. This is a tribute to his intelligence, hard work, and devotion to a country that he has served his entire adult life.”

Rogin identifies other Republican senators who were for Chuck Hagel before they were against him, including John McCain, John Kyl and Lamar Alexander:

“When Senator Hagel came to the Senate, his actions often reflected his experience as a combat veteran. He did what he believed was best for the men and women in uniform, and he defended his positions forcefully,” said Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-AZ). ”Senator Hagel has continued to protect and defend the country, notably through his work on the Foreign Relations and Intelligence Committees. He had strong opinions, and he was never shy about letting them be known.”

“Senator Hagel’s heroism and service serving side by side with his brother in Vietnam is one of the most fascinating, heroic stories of any member of the Senate,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN). “With that sort of independent background, you can imagine he brought to this body a sense of independence, a great knowledge of the world… [H]e understands the world better than almost anyone, and he works hard at it. He has been independent in his views, willing to criticize those he thought were wrong, including those in his own party. …  We will miss Senator Hagel.”

“To those who worked with Hagel in the Senate, the GOP’s turn against their former boss is a betrayal of the comity and mutual respect the Nebraska lawmaker and his GOP colleagues shared for so many years,” Rogin adds.

“Hagel and his former GOP colleagues may have differed strongly on some issues, but there was no disputing his deep credibility on matters of foreign policy or national security,” one former Hagel staffer said. “These recent attacks amount to a mix of revisionist history and political gamesmanship, not a substantive examination of his record. And I think most of his former colleagues know that. This whole dynamic is a product of the trial-balloon method; it will change dramatically if he is actually the nominee.”

Photo: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell speaking at CPAC 2011 in Washington, DC. Gage Skidmore/Flickr.

Perhaps that’s why, just in time for the holidays, the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) launched a scathing attack on some of the most prominent — and pro-Israel– [...]]]> There’s no better way to commemorate a civil war among Jews 2,275 years ago, memorialized by the Jewish festival of Chanuka, than by a little intra-tribe squabbling.

Perhaps that’s why, just in time for the holidays, the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) launched a scathing attack on some of the most prominent — and pro-Israel– Jewish Senators and organizations like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

Noah Silverman, RJC’s Congressional Affairs Director since 2006, may have been moved by the sight of boiling oil when he made his debut as an official RJC blogger. No sooner writ than said, Silverman’s pontifications splattered over to RJC’s e-mail list on Thursday night.

Silverman attacks Jews and Jewish organizations who have come out in support of the immediate ratification of the New START Treaty. Picking up where the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) and JINSA left off, Silverman’s rails against “an unprecedented effort to ‘make START a Jewish issue‘ by pressuring Jewish communal organizations to advocate for the treaty’s ratification.”

He’s irate with the ADL and the American Council of World Jewry, both of whom  objected when Senate Republicans made it known that they would use member prerogative to block ratification: “We are deeply concerned that failure to ratify the new START treaty will have national security consequences far beyond the subject of the treaty itself,” a Nov. 19 letter from the ADL to all members of the Senate asserted. ”The U.S. diplomatic strategy to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons requires a U.S.-Russia relationship of trust and cooperation.”

Granted that the ADL was speaking from the perspective of its anti-Iran agenda. Nonetheless — and perhaps especially so — it’s bizarre to hear the RJC’s Silverman challenging the right of Jewish organizations to weigh in on issues other than Israel. And Silverman is livid that Senate Democrats would dare to use an argument about Israel’s security to enlist AIPAC in the effort to get START ratified.

MJ Rosenberg — citing Nathan Guttman in the Forward and Ron Kampeas at the Jewish Telegraphic Agency — suggests that

AIPAC is in agony. It desperately wants to support the US-Russia START treaty aimed at limiting nuclear warheads because the treaty would greatly advance Israel’s security.

But it is afraid of defying right-wing Republicans in the Senate. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), in particular, is telling AIPAC “don’t you dare.” His reason is simple: Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has ordered Republicans to block anything the President submits to the Senate except, of course, tax cuts for millionaires. That includes START.

Tight-with-the-right Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin is Silverman’s source that the involvement of AIPAC in a non-Israel issue is shocking. Rubin writes,  “An experienced Israel hand tells me, ‘Well, they of course claim there is a direct link to Israeli security. But, no, this must be very rare.’ A Capitol Hill adviser from another office says ‘I’ve never seen this done with AIPAC on a non-Israel issue.’”

But it’s not all that rare, according to Rosenberg:

AIPAC argues that it does not get involved in congressional battles that do not directly involve Israel. Of course, they do. They always have. Even when I worked at AIPAC decades ago, they put their full lobbying weight behind a then-controversial plan to establish a military base on the Pacific island of Diego Garcia.

Why? Because the Republican President at the time asked them to. More recently, AIPAC made sure that its friends in Congress knew that the “right vote” for Israel was supporting both Iraq wars. (Had AIPAC not indicated its support for war, far fewer Democrats would have voted for the second Iraq war.)

Silverman frames the effort to pass START as evidence of  “a panicked White House is scrambling to salvage what it can of its legislative agenda before its influence in Congress is diminished next year.” But the letter to AIPAC which so outrages Silverman was written by two longtime senators who supported arms control long before Barack Obama was elected president.

Michigan Democrat Carl Levin was first elected to the Senate in 1978, where he’s Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He’s been consistently supportive of conventional forces and basic, reliable weapons systems to protect national security. His support for START is anything but last minute. In a column in the Niles Daily Star on July 9, Levin wrote:

As Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described it, New START will “make our country more secure and advance our core national security interests.” This treaty is in keeping with a long tradition of bilateral, verifiable arms control agreements with Russia and its predecessor, the Soviet Union, and it strengthens the U.S. commitment to stopping the spread of nuclear weapons.

Silverman not only ignores Mullen’s endorsement of START, he seems completely oblivious to the support expressed by Republicans for “resetting” the Treaty. They include what Jim Lobe calls are the “big guns in what remains of the Republican foreign policy Establishment, including five former secretaries of state whose service spanned the last five Republican administrations.” They include Colin Powell, James Baker, Henry Kissinger, George Schultz and Lawrence Eagleburger, who wrote in a Washington Post op-ed that there are “compelling reasons” for Republicans to approve ratification of START.

Bloomberg News reports that several Republican senators — among them Richard Lugar, Bob Corker, Lamar Alexander, Bob Bennett, John McCain, and Kyl himself, are hinting they could support the reset of START in the lame-duck Senate session if (and perhaps only if) the Senate voted to extend the expiring Bush-era tax cuts to cover Americans in all income groups. So it’s domestic politics, not national security, that may determine the fate of START, JINSA notwithstanding. MJ Rosenberg also thinks that “Kyl may come around and then AIPAC can too.”

Silverman, who worked for seven years as a legislative aide in Kyl’s office, also uses his first blogpost to defend Kyl against what he deems to be assaults on his former boss’s reputation. He is no doubt bristling at the thought that his former boss will give in on START out of political expediency. Although the RJC launched some of the most vicious ad hominem attack ads against Obama before the 2008 election, Silverman huffs that “Pro-Obama commentators attacked Kyl in the most demeaning and personal terms — including calling him unpatriotic.”

The “demeaning” attack on Kyl to which Silverman links is a Huffington Post rhymed rant by self-described Ranting Political Poet Jim Parry. The personal attack: a single Tweet by Washington Monthly contributor and blogger Steve Benen. And the accusation of Kyl’s being “unpatriotic”? A tweet by actress Elizabeth Banks, co-star of the frat-boy comedy film Zack and Miri Make a Porno.

Does Silverman really consider two tweets and a rant “pro-Obama news commentary”? If so, it explains alot.

Like why, after 25 years of Republican Jewish Coalition activism, there is only one single Jewish Republican to be found in the U.S. Congress — in either the upper or lower chamber.