Will Republicans Commit Suicide Over the Defense Budget?

Republicans appear ready to commit suicide over the defense budget. Attempting to block the nomination of Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense is only the most recent example. Arguing for maintaining the size of our defense budget is another related strategy that is also suicidal. No matter how you measure defense spending there is no rational argument for keeping expenditures at their current levels. There is no enemy that warrants such levels and we are bankrupting our country. The neo con foreign policy of Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz, et al, got us into this mess and the Republican Party seems unwilling to admit that their policies were a mistake.

As a lifelong Republican activist I have spent much of the prior 40 years trying to move the Republican Party in a more libertarian direction. I believe the Republican Party cannot survive unless it moves away from the dangerous and fiscally irresponsible positions that it adopted during the Bush administration.

Chuck Hagel is a fine and decent man who is eminently qualified to be Secretary of Defense. Let’s get behind him and behind reasonable reductions in defense spending and use these issues as a way for Republicans and Democrats to finally work together on issues that are the most critical to our future.