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Tuesday, May 29, 2012
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Several papers and websites are reporting this morning that the White House has already begun to search for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' replacement. McClatchy reports the White House "began floating the names of possible replacements for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Monday." A "well-connected Republican said that White House officials have launched an aggressive search for Gonzales' replacement, though President Bush hadn't decided whether to ask for his resignation." According to McClatchy, potential replacements include Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, Security and Exchange Commission Chairman Chris Cox, White House anti-terrorism adviser Fran Townsend, former Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson and former Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson. The Washington Post also says "one GOP strategist with close ties to the White House said last night that it is likely Gonzales will leave and that White House counsel Fred F. Fielding already has potential replacements in mind."
According to The Politico, in one scenario Chertoff would replace Gonzales and his successor at DHS "might be Townsend." The list of possible AG candidates mentioned by The Politico is nearly the same as that of McClatchy, though Cox's name is missing and it includes former Sen. Fred Thompson, retired federal judge Laurence H. Silberman and former acting Attorney General George Terwilliger. The Politico also reports "it is now a virtual certainty that" Deputy AG Paul McNulty "will also resign shortly." According to the Politico, "Officials were debating whether Gonzales and McNulty should depart at the same time or whether McNulty should go a day or two after Gonzales."
White House spokesman Tony Snow's responses to questions regarding Gonzales' future, deemed "tepid" or lukewarm," were taken as a clear signal that Gonzales may soon be gone from the stage. The AP, for example, reports the White House "said it hoped Gonzales would survive the tumult. Asked if the attorney general had contained the political damage from the dismissals of eight federal prosecutors, White House spokesman Tony Snow said, 'I don't know'" and "declined...to predict how long Gonzales would stay in his job." McClatchy says Snow "offered a tepid defense," and the Washington Post says Snow "offered tepid support for Gonzales." Meanwhile, the Chicago Tribune reports House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said yesterday, "I believe we need a new attorney general.'"
But placing himself in the familiar the role of contrarian, political strategist Dick Morris, appearing on Fox News' Hannity and Colmes, said Bush should retain Gonzales, adding "the administration should show some guts for a change and stand up and say 'we have the right to fire any of these guys. We fired them because they wouldn't prosecute voter fraud and other crimes. It's our right to enforce the President's policy on U.S. Attorneys. That's why they are appointed and not civil servants and you guys can go fly a kite.'"
Fitzgerald Drawn Into Controversy The Washington Post, in a front-page story, discloses that U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald "was ranked among prosecutors who had 'not distinguished themselves' on a Justice Department chart sent to the White House in March 2005, when he was in the midst of leading the CIA leak investigation. ... The ranking placed Fitzgerald below 'strong U.S. Attorneys...who exhibited loyalty' to the administration but above 'weak U.S. Attorneys who...chafed against Administration initiatives, etc.'" According to the Post, "Two prosecutors who received the same ranking as Fitzgerald were later fired." The Post goes on to report, "The March 2005 chart ranking Fitzgerald and other prosecutors was drawn up by Gonzales aide D. Kyle Sampson and sent to then-White House counsel Harriet Miers. The reference to Fitzgerald is in a portion of the memo that Justice has refused to turn over to Congress, officials told The Washington Post, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the Fitzgerald ranking has not been made public."
Among more than 3,000 e-mails and documents released by the Justice Department last night and this morning, according to USA Today was one from Feb. 7, the day after the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the firings, in which Gonzales "expressed concern that" McNulty "provided 'inaccurate' information to the congressional panel." At that hearing McNulty had said Bud Cummins, US Attorney for Arkansas, "was dismissed to make room for a former deputy to White House political strategist Karl Rove." Gonzales "was upset because he believed Bud Cummins' removal involved performance considerations." The New York Times and Los Angeles Times also delve into the mountain newly released documents.
Will Rove Testify? According to ABC World News "it remains unclear where the President is going to let key aides testify before Congress." According to ABC's Jan Crawford Greenburg, White House counsel Fred Fielding "is now looking to strike a deal that would allow some of these documents and some White House advisers to testify while still preserving that right that the President has to get confidential advice from his advisers. But Senate Democrats, including Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, have suggested they are in no mood for compromise, and that does appear to set a showdown for a separation of powers battle." The New York Times also reports "Republicans close to the White House" say they "expect Fielding to offer some sort of compromise rather than rule out testimony entirely."
Roll Call and the New York Times pass along Republicans gripes concerning Sen. Charles Schumer's dual roles as chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and member of the Senate Judiciary committee." According to the Times, Republicans claim Schumer" has been more interested in exploiting" the dismissal of the US Attorneys "for political gain than he has been in conducting an impartial investigation." Republicans note that the DSCC has "aggressively highlighted the dismissals in campaign literature it has disseminated in recent days, even as Mr. Schumer forges ahead with the investigation.' Sen. Arlen Specter, on CNN's The Situation Room, said Schumer was "doing a spectacular job of making it a big political issue to win Democratic seats." Roll Call adds that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican Conference Chairman Jon Kyl and Specter "have openly charged that Schumer has a conflict of interest."
Media reports this morning suggest the House vote count on the Democratic pullout plan remains too close to call. The Capitol Hill newspaper The Hill has been canvassing the vote, and reports this morning that "at least eight Democrats are planning to vote 'no' on the Iraq supplemental, scheduled for a Thursday vote. Two more are 'leaning no.' Meanwhile, there are over three dozen Democrats who are undecided." The leadership, says The Hill, "can lose only 15 votes if Republicans stick together, giving leaders little room as they seek to balance the demands of liberals who want a fast withdrawal with those of conservative Democrats, who are wary of setting any kind of timetable for commanders in the field to follow." The Politico, another inside-the-Beltway publication, this morning reveals the tactic House Speaker Pelosi is asking to convince anti-war liberals who think her plan doesn't go far enough: "Vote for this bill, or you'll end up giving President Bush exactly what he wants." Pelosi "is privately telling leaders of the Out of Iraq Caucus...that if the leadership-crafted spending bill, which includes a 2008 withdrawal date, goes down, she'll quickly bring up a 'clean' spending bill just for combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through the end of the year and seek Republican support to pass it." Meanwhile, trying to help the Democratic leadership, "the liberal activist group" MoveOn.org "announced its support" for a the leaders' bill, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Another Democratic tactic to put together a House majority is adding domestic spending to the war measure. The Washington Post reports House leaders "are offering billions in federal funds for lawmakers' pet projects large and small to secure enough votes this week to pass an Iraq funding bill that would end the war next year." But "so far, the projects -- which range from the reconstruction of New Orleans levees to the building of peanut storehouses in Georgia -- have had little impact on the tally." The Washington Times notes "the supplemental spending bill includes more than $3.7 billion in farm subsidies, $2.9 billion in additional Gulf Coast hurricane relief and $2.4 billion for social programs such as money for rural Northwest school districts, health insurance for poor children, energy assistance for poor families and others." Rep. Jeb Hensarling, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, "said Democratic leaders were trying to 'wrap pork in Old Glory.' 'To call some of the stuff in this bill an emergency must have Webster spinning in his grave,' Mr. Hensarling said. 'The real emergency Democrats must have is the emergency of selling votes to get this thing passed.'"
Jonah Goldberg, in his column for the Los Angeles Times, says the stake for the Democrats couldn't be higher, because "the simple fact" is they "were elected in large part to end the war. That was certainly how the party's liberal base saw it, then and now. But look at how the Democrats are behaving. They've completely failed to stop the surge, and their latest efforts to derail the war are so convoluted -- timetables on top of timetables -- that even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, a cosponsor of legislation to withdraw troops by September 2008, can't explain them."
Bush's Lowers Expectations Coinciding with the fourth anniversary of the US invasion, President Bush yesterday urged the nation to be patient with his "surge" strategy, warning that "there will be good days and bad days ahead." Fox News reported Bush "asked Americans for a little more time, just a matter of months, to allow the troop surge in Iraq to accomplish its purpose." Bush "acknowledged that the war has been hard-going, but even before all the traditional forces are in place, the President said there are already some hopeful signs." This morning, the New York Times says "Bush's commemoration of the anniversary...was notable for the sharp change in tone from his speeches in the heady, early days of the war -- when it still appeared possible that a quick victory in Baghdad could be followed by a relatively swift withdrawal. In those first few months, Mr. Bush argued that he was on the way to spreading democracy throughout the Middle East through the euphoria that would surely follow the unseating of Saddam Hussein." But yesterday, "Bush made no reference to democracy." And the Financial Times notes Bush said the war "can be won," in contrast "with the president's traditional statements of confidence in the ultimate certainty of US victory. Mr Bush said that fewer than half of the 21,500 new combat troops had so far arrived in Iraq." USA Today runs a similar report.
Most media reports place Bush's remarks in the context of recent polls showing scant public support for the war. The CBS Evening News, for example, prefaced Bush's comments saying "the war goes on" and "there's no end or victory in sight." In 2003, "Bush made his case about Iraq to an American public that feels much different tonight about the war than it did four years ago. Just 29% of Americans now say things are going well in Iraq. Compare that to May of 2003, when more than seven in ten Americans thought things were going well." Likewise, ABC World News reported, "The President's declaration that the mission will ultimately succeed has not changed -- public opinion, however, has." The Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor and Washington Post make similar points.
Is It "Morning In America"? Liberal columnist E.J. Dionne, in a Washington Post piece titled "Morning In America," describes the upside to the US fiasco in Iraq: "To understand how much the Iraq war has transformed the way most Americans think about foreign policy, consider what passed for shrewd analysis four years ago. The words on the 'in' list included 'unilateral,' 'bold,' 'robust,' 'transformative' and 'sole remaining superpower.' ... Today, the 'in' and 'out' lists would be almost exactly reversed. The new 'out' list includes such additions as 'reckless,' 'arrogant' and 'incompetent.'" Dionne adds "those who spent the past four years hyping threats, underestimating costs, ignoring rational warnings, painting unrealistic futures and savaging their opponents have been discredited. This awakening is the first step toward rebuilding our country's influence and power."
Two groups of major media organizations took the opportunity of the 4th anniversary of the war in Iraq to gauge the mood of average Iraqis. A survey conducted for USA TODAY, ABC News, the British Broadcasting Corp. and ARD, a German TV network, continues to get the most play. For a second day, USA Today reports on that survey, which it says found "disillusionment about the country's political future and opposition among Shiites and Sunni Arabs to US forces deployed there." The Washington Post and ABC World News run similar stories. On Sunday, however, the Sunday Times of London reported on a survey, conducted by Opinion Research Business (ORB), "a respected British market research company that funded its own survey of 5,019 Iraqis over the age of 18," under the headline, "Iraqis: Life is Getting Better." According to the Sunday Times (which is getting little play in US media) the ORB survey found:
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A new poll out from EPIC/MRA, an independent Michigan pollster, shows Sen. Hillary Clinton with a commanding lead in the Democratic primary, while Sen. John McCain is just edging out Rudy Giuliani. The AP reports that Clinton leads the Democratic field with 45%, followed by Sen. Barack Obama with 29% and John Edwards with 16%. On the GOP side, McCain leads with 30%, followed by Giuliani with 26% and Mitt Romney with 21%. The Detroit News reports that while McCain leads Giuliani among all GOP candidates, "in a head-to-head match-up in a separate poll question, Giuliani edges McCain, 49-46. ... 'Things could change in a year, but Hillary Clinton seems very strong in Michigan, this despite some grassroots activity in the state for Edwards,' said pollster Ed Sarpolus. 'In the case of McCain, he is not as strong as he needs to be in Michigan. He cannot count his chickens yet here. And Romney still has lower name ID than the other two.' The survey shows 98 percent of voters recognize McCain, 97 percent are familiar with Giuliani and 88 percent know Romney."
An analysis piece out this morning from McClatchy's Steve Thomma says the "most liberal member of Congress running for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination isn't Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio. It's Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois." The study, "released this month by the National Journal, a respected inside-the-Beltway research report, will help voters cut through the spin and hype of TV sound bites in coming months and judge these candidates for themselves." On the Democratic side, "the analysis of 'lifetime' voting records shows Obama as the most liberal with a score of 84.3 after two full years in the Senate. The most liberal score possible was 99." The "lifetime liberal scores for the other Democrats: Kucinich, 79.4; Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, 79.2; Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, 78.8; and Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, 76.8."
Contrast Seen Between Obama's Talk On Iraq, Votes On War The Boston Globe runs an examination on Obama's opposition to the Iraq war, saying he has "used his long-running opposition to the war as a cornerstone of his campaign, telling enthusiastic supporters that he opposed the war from the beginning -- a claim neither Clinton nor the other top-tier Democratic contenders can make." However, a Globe review of Obama's record "during his 26 months in Congress reveals that he has taken a more nuanced and cautious position on the war than the full-bore opposition. Campaigning for the Illinois Senate seat in 2003 and 2004, Obama scolded Bush for invading Iraq and vowed he would 'unequivocally' vote against an additional $87 billion to pay for it. Yet since taking office in January 2005, he has voted for four separate war appropriations, totaling more than $300 billion. Last June, Obama voted no to Senator John F. Kerry's proposal to remove most combat troops from Iraq by July 2007, warning that an 'arbitrary deadline' could 'compound' the Bush administration's mistake. And last week, he voted for a Republican-sponsored resolution that stated the Senate would not cut off funding for troops in Iraq." The Globe concludes that "the contrast between Obama's rhetoric and his votes in the Senate could damage his reputation among anti-war liberals, some of his strongest supporters."
Roll Call reports Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch (R) yesterday became the fourth GOP senator to back former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's (R) presidential campaign. Hatch "hailed Romney's leadership abilities, calling him 'an innovative problem solver' and noting the candidate's success as a turnaround artist when the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City were teetering on insolvency. Left unsaid is that both Romney and Hatch are among the most prominent Mormon politicians in the United States." The Hill reports that Hatch said, "Governor Romney has the leadership qualities we need to bring real change to Washington. ... At a time of unprecedented challenges, we need to elect an innovative problem solver like Governor Romney." The Salt Lake Tribune adds that Hatch "has praised Romney in the past and attended a fundraiser for him in Utah last month, but had not formally endorsed the former governor, a fellow Mormon."
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The AP reports that Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter (R), "a moderate who has often clashed with the Bush administration and his fellow GOP lawmakers, said Monday he plans to seek a sixth term in 2010. 'There are a lot of important things to be done and finally after being here to acquire some seniority, I'm in a position to do that,' said Specter, 77. 'I'm full of energy and my wife doesn't want me home for breakfast, lunch and dinner.'"
An editorial in this morning's Wall Street Journal says that the heavy frontloading of the presidential primary calendar "is unfortunate for many reasons, not least because this accelerated process assists the well known and well heeled candidates who can raise boatloads of money in advance. ... Elites favor early endgames, of course, as a way to unify party support." However, the Journal opines that the process could "favor someone else -- namely, a billionaire who wants to run as an independent? It's possible that both major party nominees could emerge from their accelerated primaries so bruised, and with such high negatives, that the voters will already be feeling buyer's remorse. Then someone like New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg could decide to get into the race, spend $500 million of his own money, and truly remake the presidential race."
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Jay Leno: "In more serious news, according to some new recently declassified documents, Iraq pretended to have weapons of mass destruction to prevent themselves from being attacked. Well, that plan worked out well."
Jay Leno: "According to a new study, one-third of Washington, DC is illiterate. Unfortunately, it's the third that's in charge of the government. That's the sad part."
David Letterman: From "Top Ten Signs You've Been Watching Too Much College Basketball: "2. The nagging voice in your head saying, 'Cheney and I should really be focusing on Iraq.'"
David Letterman: "Hey, you folks are here on a good night. The entire balcony is filled with Federal prosecutors fired by Alberto Gonzales."
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