Something interesting happened last week — traffic on Charles Hinderliter’s blog increased six-fold.

Mr. Hinderliter, a third-year graduate student in a doctoral program at the University of South Carolina, started a blog, “Chuck Hagel for President in 2008,” hagel2008.blogspot.com, last February. The blog chugged along with moderate traffic until this past week when on Wednesday, President Bush called for 20,000 more troops to calm Baghdad, and then on Thursday, the senior senator from Nebraska, Mr. Hagel, labeled the president’s proposal “the most dangerous foreign policy blunder since Vietnam.”

Republicans who oppose the war in Iraq are looking for a candidate to support their position. And Mr. Hagel might just fit the bill. Mr. Hagel, however, is not an announced Republican candidate for the presidency yet.

The three leading candidates for the Republican nomination — Senator McCain, Mayor Giuliani, and Governor Romney — all support President Bush’s foreign policy. Mr. Hagel is the only Republican leading the charge against the war.

Voters like Mr. Hinderliter have had a hard time finding a candidate that matches their foreign policy stance since Gerald Ford was president. At the Republican Convention in 1976, the Republican foreign policy stance completely changed. Ronald Reagan successfully influenced the platform to inject “morality” — lack of desire to do business with other countries that were not in line with American democratic ideals — into foreign policy. Since then, “morality” has been a part of the party line on foreign policy. But Mr. Hagel will challenge that.

“I’ve been a lifelong Republican but haven’t been impressed with this administration’s foreign policy. I think it’s been a catastrophe,” Mr. Hinderliter said. He started his Web site to influence the process instead of just deciding between two unsatisfactory choices. In 2004, he reluctantly voted for Senator Kerry. “I’m a social conservative, pro-life when it comes to abortion. I voted for John Kerry in 2004 because of foreign policy, but I’d rather vote for a Republican.”

The pro-Hagel blogger says that the Republican drubbing in the 2006 elections helped create the perfect conditions for the senator to enter the race. The election, he says, represented a defeat for Mr. Bush’s foreign policy positions. Should Mr. Hagel fail to enter the race, Mr. Hinderliter will look to Democrats, such as Senator Biden of Delaware and Governor Richardson of New Mexico. “If push came to shove, between either one of them and a Republican I didn’t like, I’d be very torn,” he said.

“A lot of the people who contact me are disaffected Republicans who have been struggling the last several years who feel that no one represents them anymore,” Mr. Hinderliter said.

“This is one of the largest spikes I’ve seen,” he said. While the Web site has received criticism of Mr. Hagel for breaking with the president, the bulk of the commentary is positive. Mr. Hagel’s admirers write to “praise him for the courage to speak out for what is right.”

Whether Mr. Hagel gets in the race and whether his position on the war is successfully supported will demonstrate whether this stance is still viable within the GOP. His “realist,” interest-oriented, foreign policy views were last shared by the likes of James Baker and Brent Scowcroft. On “Meet the Press” on Sunday, the senator echoed the Iraq Study Group’s call for “political accommodation” in Iraq and the Middle East.

Jeff Bell, who focused on issues and research on the Reagan Campaign and now heads Capitol City Partners, a Washington consulting firm, says he sees a possibility of Mr. Hagel running as a “peace candidate.” But a run by the Nebraskan senator threatens to revive the debate over those Republican foreign policy tenets established in 1976.

Mr. Gitell (gitell.com) is a contributing editor of The New York Sun.