Finagle A Hagel

It is just fanfuckingtastic that Chuck Hagel has the proper enemies, but he is still a Republican being considered for a top post in a newly reelected Democratic administration.  That is a political miscalculation.  It is a form of enabling the worst of the worst reactionary teabagging assholes and diminishing the Democratic Party brand at a time when the President's party will be facing traditionally difficult political realities in the run up to the 2014 mid-term elections.  Much in the same way that Obama fucking with electoral politics in Massachusetts because of his own mishandling of the Susan Rice situation may lead to a party-damaging loss of a Democratic Senate seat, the nomination of Hagel would help reinforce the narrative that the Republican Party is somehow well-suited to management of defense and military policies.  At the same time it also helps create a narrative that Republicans are an actual functional political party that deserves a place in modern society and not a pack of crazed and ignorant violent primitives.  Obama is an excellent campaigner and protector of his own political fortunes, but he is an absolute disaster as leader and strategist of the party that delivered him to the White House.