A source that I trust recently had a long conversation with a staffer for Chuck Hagel and passed details of it along to me. Hagel is preparing to set up a campaign headquarters in Nebraska, but is in a holding pattern because former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson is entertaining thoughts about running for president.

The fact that Hagel’s campaign would be held up or stopped entirely by Thompson’s entrance is very telling about what sort of campaign Chuck Hagel would run and who he thinks his constituency will be. For one, this tells us that Hagel is not going to be running on his opposition to the Iraq war alone. If he were, he wouldn’t be threatened by a candidate that has not defined the last year of his political life opposing the Bush administration on the war in Iraq. More likely Hagel will have to reach out to traditional conservative voters who aren’t satisfied by the social liberalism (perceived, actual, or former) of the three Republican front-runners, nor with the nativism and tepidity that define the second and third tier of the Republican field.

The problem Hagel faces is that Fred Thompson would likely sucked up oxygen and get these voters without having to do as much leg work to begin with. Hagel will have to run on his arch-conservative voting record and fight the media’s representation of him as a moderate and a maverick. Doing so will mean a diminished emphasis on the war, as he spends time talking about what makes him a good conservative.

If Hagel is waiting to decide on running until Fred Thompson makes his decision, it is because Thompson’s entrance would greatly reduce Hagel’s chances of winning the nomination.

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