Arianna Huffington & Scarborough Claim: W.F. Buckley, Jr. Would Have Supported Hagel

January 15th, 2013 7:29 AM

I don't know about you, but when I want to know how William F. Buckley, Jr. would have felt about an issue, I always consult Arianna Huffington and Joe Scarborough.  But seriously, who would you trust more to reflect how Buckley would have felt on an important issue of the day: the editors of the National Review--the magazine that WFB founded--or the combined wisdom of Huffington and Scarborough?  In an editorial published before Hagel's nomination became official, the Editors at National Review wrote: "Chuck Hagel is a very poor choice for the next secretary of defense," concluding that he was "definitively not the man who should be the next secretary of defense."

But on today's Morning Joe, when Huffington asked "don't you think William F. Buckley would be endorsing Chuck Hagel now?", Scarborough responded with an emphatic "yes!"  View the video after the jump.



As for Huffington's claim that neo-cons are never held accountable for their foreign policy mistakes, how about holding Hagel [and then-Sen. Barack Obama]--accountable for their active opposition to the surge in Iraq that turned the corner in that war? Watch these two unlikely keepers of the Buckley flame at work.
 

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON: And don't you think William F. Buckley would be endorsing Chuck Hagel right now?  I mean, here is a Republican --

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Can I answer that? Yes! Because at the end of his life, William F. Buckley said neo-conservatives were not actually conservative.  Their beliefs had no basis in reality.

HUFFINGTON: This is actually a great example for the Republican party to rally around a moderate Republican who will help us redefine foreign policy and get away from the neo-cons who are never held accountable for all the mistakes around the war in Iraq, and Afghanistan.  Never.