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What Up, Chuck?

By fitsnews • on March 9, 2007

NEBRASKA SENATOR TO ANNOUNCE FOR PRESIDENCY ON MONDAY

FITSNews - March 9, 2007 - Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel will announce that he is running for president on Monday, sources tell FITSNews.

The only question is will he run as a Republican or mount an independent challenge that would spare him the ordeal of a GOP primary?

A staunch critic of President George W. Bush’s handling of the War in Iraq, Hagel has (not surprisingly) added considerable centrist and liberal support to his existing conservative base in recent years. With the top tier of Republican presidential candidates already staked out in support of the war, Hagel’s candidacy would throw an interesting wrinkle into the GOP presidential equation should he announce as a Republican.

Hagel’s Washington D.C. office did not immediately return calls from FITSNews seeking comment.

How Hagel plays in South Carolina - one of the few places where Republicans by and large still support the Bush war effort - is another story, however. Just look at the grief GOP Rep. Bob Inglis is getting for opposing Bush’s troop surge. That dynamic may be one reason why the possibility of an independent candidacy holds such allure for Hagel.

Hagel will make his announcement in Omaha, which is somewhere in middle America … gettin’ right to the heart of matters, it’s the heart that matters more … and in case you were wondering, yeah, we just slipped into a Counting Crows song for a minute there.