on the imperial imperative:
His problems and those of Giuliani can be boiled down to the message of an Iowa poll released earlier this week: 56 per cent of registered Republicans want the troops out of Iraq within six months. The message? This electoral season any candidate shouting "Stay the course in Iraq" is doomed. So do the Republicans have a candidate with a simple call to bring the troops home now? Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska has been saying this for months, but thus far he's dithered on the edge of an announcement that he's in the race.
(...) But they are also aware that if they seriously tilt towards Gravel's position about the insanity these overseas interventions they will be savaged by the political establishment on every talk show and every piece of political analysis in the mainstream press. So they are caught between the public mood and the imperial imperative and the latter will prevail in their calculations and thus--absent a prodigious orgy of doublespeak -alienate their political base.