Your headline begs the question: if moderate republicans (and Hagel, incidentally DOES NOT belong on this list, appropos his opposition to the war), then what, pray tell, are they to be replaced with?
Seems to me the choice then lay between democrats and One-percenter republicans.
In that case, I’d rather have your “RINOs”, thnak you.
Wow! You surrender so quickly, the French are in awe! You’ll notice that Stevens, Cochran, Warner, Hagel and Graham are all from solidly red states. Hagel already trails a statewide office-holder in primary polls. I didn’t explicitly didn’t target Domenici because he’s probably as good as we could hope for. Aside from Warner, who I expect to retire, Hagel has the most prominent Democrat elected to statewide office, Ben Nelson. And Nelson is more conservative than Hagel!
Why bother electing Republicans if you think there’s no hope of doing better than Hagel or Graham?