December 27, 2010 7:06PM 

# Is Chuck Hagel a Republican? 

By [David Boaz](https://www.cato.org/people/david-boaz) 

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On Fox News’s *Special Report* tonight, discussing potential new Cabinet members for President Obama, *Weekly Standard* senior writer Stephen Hayes dismissed former senator Chuck Hagel as “an anti-Republican Republican — somebody who’s officially a Republican but in fact isn’t all that Republican.”

Really?

It’s true that Hagel didn’t always march in lockstep with the Bush-Cheney administration, whose loyal amanuensis [Hayes has been](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_F._Hayes#Published_work). But is this really an “anti-Republican” record?

- Voted for the Iraq war
- Voted for the Patriot Act
- Voted for the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts
- Voted against No Child Left Behind
- Voted against Bush’s Medicare prescription drug bill
- Voted against McCain-Feingold

That’s not a down-the-line Bush-McCain record. But would Hayes say it’s not a Republican voting record? Hagel had a [lifetime rating of 84 percent](http://www.conservative.org/ratings/ratingsarchive/2008/2008senate.htm#MT) from the American Conservative Union and consistent [A and B grades](http://www.ntu.org/on-capitol-hill/ntu-rates-congress/members/senate/chuck-hagel.html) from the National Taxpayers Union. He did emerge in 2006 [as a critic of the Iraq war](<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/magazine/12hagel.html?sq=The senator from Nebraska broke with his party leadership&st=cse&scp=2&pagewanted=all>). And his wife endorsed Obama in 2008.

I never really bought the “[epistemic closure](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/28/books/28conserv.html)” charge against movement conservatism. But if a leading conservative TV commentator can call Chuck Hagel an “anti-Republican Republican” when his actual record is more traditionally Republican than the policies of the Bush-Cheney administration, then there’s an odd sort of blacklisting going on.

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[General](https://www.cato.org/general), [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics) 

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