Former senator Chuck Hagel with Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta.
(Glenn Fawcett, Department of Defense/Wikimedia Commons)
The opposition against Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominee for secretary of defense, has been building. The attack came from several groups of anonymous donors, on his side of the aisle, who have spent millions of dollars funding ads to put the breaks on his appointment.
Todd Zwillich, Takeaway Washington correspondent, gives us a sense of how these donors could affect today's confirmation hearings and how rough a ride Hagel is in for today.
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The show is a co-production of WNYC Radio and Public Radio International, in collaboration with New York Times Radio and WGBH Boston.
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Comments [4]
Way more than $200,000 has been spent by "Use Your Mandate, thus far. I am a Brooklyn resident, clearly far from the Beltway and I already got two expensive flyers urging me to contact my senators.
Interesting how disruptive and obnoxious agit-prop leftist hecklers and massive media outlets featuring heavily biased coverage in favor of Democrats are all noble and worthy of respect but organizations collecting money and creating a well produced expression of their opinion is nefarious.
Regarding the opposition to Chuck Hagel, the characterization of Use Your Mandate as a "liberal" organization is most debatable. It instead appears to be a faux-liberal effort from Republican-leaning forces.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/us/politics/secret-donors-finance-fight-against-hagel.html?_r=0
So if he is seriously challenged it is the fault of "outside money" aka freedom of political speech and not Hagel's own words and record. Nice reframing of the narrative.
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