RUSH: Anyway, Chuck Hagel promised a big announcement today. He promoted this big announcement all week last week. Lots of national reporters left their favorite confines in the nation’s capital to fly out to a red state. That’s already tough enough for them. Going to
HAGEL: America stands at an historic crossroads in its history. It is against this backdrop that I find myself at my own crossroads in my political future. America is facing its most divisive and difficult issue since Vietnam: the war in Iraq. I want to keep my focus on helping find a responsible way out of this tragedy and not divert my energy, my efforts, and my judgment with competing political consideration. I’m here today to announce that my family and I will make a decision on my political future later this year. America is reaching for a national consensus of purpose. We will find it because Americans expect it and will demand it.
RUSH: Did I hear that? He called a big press conference, got all these DC reporters out to Nebraska — that’s like having to go to Arkansas! It’s almost as bad as having to go to Mississippi, South Carolina. Go out to Nebraska and say he’s not running? Let me tell you something. There are going to be a lot of really PO’d national reporters who dragged themselves out there for this. Yeah, his job is he’s gotta get us out of Iraq now, folks, and he can’t be distracted by any of that. He’s going to talk to his family, going to talk to everybody else, and later on this year will decide what he’s going to do. What kind of megalomania does somebody have to have to build yourself up in a forthcoming press conference so everybody speculates you’re going to get in the ring, and then you say, “Guess what? I’m not”? You could have done this with an e-mail. You could have done it with a fax. Besides how do you pad an expense account if you’re a reporter and go to Nebraska? It’s not even fun in that regard.