conservative media outlets spent days beating on hagel, combing through everything they could get on him, and printing even the most baseless of it, like the accusation that he’d accepted money from a group called friends of hamas, which does not exist. the freshman senator ted cruz, of texas, came close to suggesting that hagel was a paid agent of saudi arabia or north korea. as late as tuesday, just before the cloture vote, senator james inhofe, of oklahoma, was on the senate floor trying to link hagel to holocaust denial in iran. (in a particularly bizarre moment, inhofe brought up “schindler’s list,” which came out twenty years ago, and said he’d seen it for the first time three days ago.) none of it amounted to anything.
but after the right put so much effort into tanking the nomination of a man who used to be one of their own, the republicans in the senate couldn’t simply let hagel past without putting on some kind of show. so that’s what they did: they kicked and screamed a little, and they delayed the final vote by a couple weeks, knowing all the while what the outcome would end up being. it was a futile display, but it was fitting, too, as a glimpse of what the gop.’s legislative strategy has become in the obama era: not governing but petulance
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