Gonzo may have job insurance

[pscot]

Andrew Sullivan at theatlantic.com speculates. The new AG would have to be confirmed by the Senate. Another Bush crony won't pass the smell test, and an honest outsider might actually start to look into the criminal conspiracy that it the Bush WhiteHouse.


If Gonzales is cashiered, as now seems likely, who will replace him? McNulty is just as implicated. A figure above the fray? Bush can't risk it. Miers? A no-go. The replacement will tell us a great deal about how scared the Bush people are of real, independent scrutiny. Which may leave them with the option of ... going back to where they started and keeping Gonzales, whatever the fallout.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/03/thinking_about_.html

[Ninja Jordan]

1. Cornyn is a Bush yes-man, and he can pass Senate confirmation (nm)

[pscot]

3. I thought of him

I'm sure there are Democrats who would vote to confirm him, but hopefully it would take 67 votes.

[DemoTex]

8. Cornyn was Texas AG under Gov. Bu$h, and carried Bu$h water then.

Remember Funeral-gate?

[Ninja Jordan]

12. Yeah, he's perfect.

I'm not sure he'd want the job anyway--to give up his seat for 2 years of AG work.

[AshevilleGuy]

2. Yes, the Senate would confirm another bush man.

Or woman. We do not have 51 reliable votes in the Senate. Johnson might still be out, Lieberman is utterly unreliable, and Pryor and/or Nelson are always available to the repukes.

Repuke senators might give lip service to an effort to contain bush on this, but when they have to vote, they will be good soldiers.

[atreides1]

4. But we forget

They have to get past the Judiciary Committee before the Senate can vote for confirmation, and the last time I heard the Democrats under Senator Leahy controlled that committee.

[AshevilleGuy]

6. You are correct. It's been so long since we were majority

I forgot about that. Perhaps there is hope after all.

[gratuitous]

13. That is the major stumbling block

Getting an AG nominee out of committee and to a vote of the full Senate is going to take some careful treading, and the Bushistas aren't generally known for their subtlety and nuance.

Right now, Cornyn would be a pretty crafty choice for AG; the Senate is very clubby, and turning down the nomination of one of their own would be difficult. I think there are still scars from when John Tower had to withdraw back in the 1980s.

Another possibility is Bush nominating James Baker III, who would be another "worst possible choice" contender, but it would be extraordinarily difficult to deny him a turn as AG, considering the general esteem in which he's held by Insider Washington.

Of course, Bush could always just avail himself of another recess appointment. If he had no compunction about naming John Bolton as UN Ambassador, I can't see him or his band of cronies cavilling at doing an end-around again on the Senate in order to install their guy as the new AG.

[pscot]

5. All it would take

is one Democrat willing to stand against it. I don't think they could pass cloture.

[DFW]

7. Leahy won't let another Gonzales get by the committee, but

Cheneyrove can surely come up with some candidate for AG who is just as bad,
but doesn't have the track record to prove it. And if you don't think a new
AG can do a lot of damage in just a year and a half, keep in mind that Gonzo
has been in office for less than that.

They can ditch Gonzo and replace him with some disaster that will squeak by committee
and the full Senate, not due to being known as awful, but for not being known at all.

My bet is that they are looking for just such a person as we write, and for all
we know, they are already shouting "Eureka!"

[pscot]

9. Your analysis suggests that Senate Democrats

have learned nothing in the last six years. If that's true, I may just go out and throw myself under a bus.

[Buzz Clik]

10. Gonzo is going nowhere unless dressed in orange and irons.

It's that simple.

[DFW]

11. Not quite THAT pessimistic, but

never forget how they got Clarence Thomas onto the Supreme Court.
They just didn't know enough about him to vote against him, not
enough Senators, anyway.

The current group of Democratic Senators, especially those on the
Judiciary Committee, will never let an obvious bad apple get to be AG.
That's why the greater danger lies with an unknown with a Harvard Law
degree and not much else to go on. They'll pounce on the bad, but if the
candidate is for all intents and purposes invisible, then there no target
to shoot at. We saw with Harriett Meiers that this is the preferred tactic
Bush falls back on when he wants to pass a rotten egg on to a country with
a nose that grows more sensitive by the day.