I’ve got nothing against Ashcroft if he will enforce all of the laws with equal zeal and vigor, irregardless of his personal feelings on the issues.
What I am afraid of is that Ashcroft will selectively enforce the laws that run along his own preferences. Would Attorney General Ashcroft be vigorous in prosecuting anti-abortion terrorists, for instance? Or will he give them a “free ride” because he agrees with their cause? How tough will AG Ashcroft be on civil rights violations, given his public antipathy towards the issue? So on and so forth.
I’d like to believe that Ashcroft will do his job fairly, but my internal cynic is whispering that he’s a GOP right-winger, which IMO is the group of hypocrites, double-talkers, and frauds (I don’t trust any group that says it’s okay for Kenneth Starr to waste 6 years just to dig up dirt on someone’s personal sex life)
I don’t believe Ashcroft’s defeat of the Ronnie White nomination was racially motivated. It’s true he mischaracterized White’s record and derailed his career but I think this was more the first salvo in his 2000 senatorial campaign against Carnahan, who had appointed White, than opposition to White because of the color of his skin. White just happened to be in the way. Nut-cutting politics maybe, but not racism.
Ashcroft is zealously anti-drug. Look for expanded DOJ efforts domestically and consequent increases in prison population. I expect Ashcroft will also be a big player in the Bush campaign to expand anti-drug and anti-guerrila efforts in Columbia.
As noted Ashcroft opposes all abortion. Will he be lax in enforcing laws assuring women access to clinics? Maybe. But men of faith sometimes surprise: remember Koop and AIDS legislation?
Microsoft and big tobacco will probably get an easier ride.
I find this upsetting: the AP reports
“In February 1999 as he sat in judgment of Clinton during the Senate impeachment trial, Ashcroft’s political action committee sold access to his fund-raising mailing list to [Linda] Tripp…so she could raise money for a legal defense fund. Federal records show Ashcroft earlier rented the same list to Paula Jones…”.
Reagan AG Ed Meese called the nomination “outstanding”. Quite an endorsement from the worst AG this side of John Mitchell.
All in all, not my nominee. But Bush owes the social-conservative wing of the GOP lots for its support in the election and its silence during the campaign, so what do you expect? I hope the Dems do not waste time on contentious hearings; as I said earlier I believe his confirmation is a sure thing.
I think conservatives see this much differently than liberals. We think Gore was a schmuck for not conceding, and we think that Ashcroft showed something we call CLASS.
Please provide a cite.
Everything I have read put Ashcroft at least 10 points up before Carnahan died. The sympathy vote pushed Carnahan over the top. Politics is about reality. The reality is that in 2 years the seat will be available again. Instead of burning bridges and playing the sore loser, the Republicans will be able to run again without the stigma of a distasteful battle against a widow in their recent past.
Besides…
It will be interesting to see if Mrs. Carnahan votes against Ashcroft’s confirmation. How can she? IMHO she would come out looking horrible.
BTW…
I don’t remember anybody on the left screaming about Clinton not appointing people the conservatives didn’t like. Clinton never took 50% of the vote, so I’m not quite sure what the uproar is about. Powell and Rice were getting appointments no matter how much Bush won by, so they are not compromises. Bush won, he is going to appoint conservatives.
Live with it.
Consider it a nose thumbing experience if you want.
I am enjoying all the protesting. It will be nice to be on the other side of the fence for 4 years.
That might not be what it’s all about. Here’s one theory:
Bush comes into office having won a contentious election with hard feelings on both sides. Many Democrats are looking forward to mid-term congressional elections. It is in the interests of Bush to try to mend fences and accomplish as much constructive as possible. It is in the interest of many Democrats to keep things as stirred up as possible, so as to ensure that nothing gets done, and they retake Congress in '02. (On a related note, Clinton just made an end-run around Congress by making a recess appointment to a Federal judicial vacancy). Keep the fires burning…
Which one is it, Freedom2? Class or political calculation?
IzzyR is dead right in his analysis, IMHO. Democrats simply must keep the cauldron hot to sustain a push in 2002. One way to do so is to oppose every hard right appointee by reminding us of Bush’s claims to be a “uniter”. Win or lose, the point of the exercise is to keep opponents of the religious right whipped up against men like Ashcroft.
Well, let’s consider his views on civil rights based on his 1998 interview with Southern Partisan magazine.
From an AP story at http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/ap/20001227/pl/ashcroft_s_words_3.html
"In a 1998 interview, Ashcroft criticized efforts by some historians to portray early Americans, like slave-owning George Washington, as racists, calling them malicious attacks'' and revisionist nonsense.’’
Your magazine also helps set the record straight,'' Ashcroft told the Southern Partisan, a two-decade-old periodical that has published articles defending Confederate figures and once sold a T-shirt commemorating Abraham Lincoln with the phrase his assassin uttered, Thus always to tyrants.’’
``You’ve got a heritage of … defending Southern patriots like (Gen. Robert E.) Lee, (Gen. Stonewall) Jackson and (Confederate President Jefferson) Davis,’’ Ashcroft said. At the time, he was courting conservatives for a possible presidential candidacy.
``We’ve all got to stand up and speak in this respect or else we’ll be taught that these people were giving their lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes and their honor to some perverted agenda,’’ he added.
At least Rillian gets a bonus point for providing a link to his source. Too bad the parts he decided to post are half the truth.
How about a little balance (from the exact same article):
“As Missouri governor from 1985 to 1993, Ashcroft signed into law a state holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr., the slain civil rights leader; established musician Scott Joplin’s house as Missouri’s only historic site honoring a black person; created an award honoring black educator George Washington Carver; named a black woman to a state judgeship; and led a fight to save Lincoln University, which was founded by black soldiers.”
"And when he considered becoming Republican Party chairman in 1993, he urged Republicans to be “tolerant” and to avoid being “mistakenly portrayed as petty, divisive and mean-spirited.”
I assume you read the whole article. Why no mention then of the above?
And for rjung:
it wasn’t fraud, it was a mandate
Ashcroft’s comment that the Southern Partisan “helps set the record straight” is highly incriminating. A few weeks before his nomination I opened up a copy of the Southern Partisan that was in the magazine rack at a Borders. The large glossy ad in the middle of the magazine adverstising the collected diaries of a confederate soldier was emblazoned with the title, “Come Ride with Nathan Bedford Forrest!”
Forrest founded the KKK. Cute pun by the Southern Partisan. Come ride with the founder of the KKK. Ha Ha.
The fact that Ashcroft could be so praising of such a publication so recently (he was interviewed by the mag. in 1998) raises troubling questions about making him AG. The AG is one of if not the chief civil-rights enforcement agent in the country.
Ashcroft also doesn’t deserve much credit for not contesting the election he lost to Mel Carnahan. He had clearly lost the election. His only option in contest would have been to sue that votes for Carnahan could not count because the former Gov. was deceased. This would have been political suicide, the equivalent of saying to Missouri, “Well you voted for the other guy knowing his widow would fill his office, but tough noogies, I win anyway.” That would have been the end of his career and he knew it.
Question:
Why shouldn’t political or philosophical agendas be brought into a nomination hearing for Attorney General? This person will be the chief enforcer of the laws of the United States. Wouldn’t it be prudent to suspect a persons diligence in enforcing some laws that the nominee has been proven to disagree with (this is along the lines of what rjung posted earlier)?
As a hypothetical say the nominee for AG was/is a Grand Dragon (or whatever the head is called) of the KKK. This person has no skeletons in his closet, pays his taxes and has had no run ins with the law and has all of the technical qualifications to fulfill the office of AG. He ‘merely’ has an espoused hatred of blacks and jews. Is it reasonable to expect the country to say, “Well, barring any overt wrongdoing on his part politics shouldn’t be a part of a nomination process so let the guy in as long as he has the appropriate qualifications.”?
I don’t think so. We are talking about the chief law enforcement officer of the United States and I think it is correct to question whether such a person can be reasonably expected to diligently apply all laws of the US…including civil rights laws.
I don’t care if the AG has a different political outlook than myself but I do care to see him/her do the job and I believe there is reasonable worry over whether John Ashcroft will take all of his duties seriously.
What of it, Jeff? I’m against special funding for minority & women-owned business, myself. I think that’s a fine quality in a prospective Attorney General.
I’m also against creating a protected class based on sexual orientation; I therefore would have voted as he did on the discrimination bill - not because I favor discrimination, but because I think it’s wrong to protect one class of people against discrimination while leaving other people exposed.
Needs2Know, thanks for starting this thread as I was hoping to see Ashcroft discussed.
I read pretty hastily so perhaps someone else early on already made this point. We can argue back and forth about whether Ashcroft’s extreme right-wing conservatism is or is not good news for the country as a whole. I personally find his political outlook repulsive and I think he will be in a position to do considerable damage. But I recognize that some of you share his politics (or think you do).
The real point for me is what this says about Bush. Yeah, sure he owes the hard-right something back for their support. But he ran on a platform of being a “unifier not a divider.” And he did everything short of sewing his mouth shut to prevent himself saying a single word against a woman’s right to choose. In other words, Bush ran as far to center as he could, all the while painting Gore as some kind of liberal extremist. Hence, choosing a divisive AG such as Ashcroft is implictly contrary to the “mandate” (and I use that time very loosely given his loss of the popular vote) that he submitted for voter approval. The choice of Cheney as VP was itself a bit dubious but with Ashcroft he’s gone way over the top. I’m not suggesting that this comes as a surprise to me; only that a hypocrite is a hypocrite by any other name.
Freedom2, you wrote: "I don’t remember anybody on the left screaming about Clinton not appointing people the conservatives didn’t like. Clinton never took 50% of the vote, so I’m not quite sure what the uproar is about."
Huh?? Are suggesting that we on the left are expecting right-wingers to “scream” about the appointment of Ashcroft? If what you meant to say was that people on the right didn’t scream about Clinton nominees, does the name Lani Guanier ring any bells for you?
And what does 50% of the vote have to do with it? Gore got more votes than Ronald Reagan and more votes than George Bush but he’s not even the president. Did you get your coffee this morning?
…As Bush is just as beholden to the right wing of his party as he is to it’s left wing (moderates to the rests of us). He has to provide a sop to the nutters on the right if he’s to survive. Failure to do so would be complete suicide as all the Senators hostage to the nutters (dependant on far right-wing votes) would desert him. Given the short time available to him to create a Cabinet, he’s going for people with known capabilities, but he’ll have to ballance moderate candidates like Whitman with something a bit more radical, else his Presidency is doomed from the start.
Second point: This nomination will give him an air of authority with the public at large. He’ll be seen to be forcing (albeit with some struggle) Congress to go his way, at least when he says it’s important. If he’s seen as mmekly surrendering his Presidency, again, would be doomed, as no one would take him seriously.
Bricker
What of it? Being against protections based on sexual orientation is fine if you’re a Senator and that’s how you feel you have to vote.
The problem lies in what happens if you are asked, as AG, to protect people based on sexual orientation when you are against it? As AG you can personally disagree with the law but you must enforce it till it is overturned by the courts or repealed by congress. I list Ashcroft’s voting record as an indication of where he stands and how this calls into question his ability to be diligent on applying all laws. I’m sure he’d never overtly ignore any law but he can set a tone and set priorities that can marginalize laws he’d be in disagreement with.
Along these lines is his member ship in the Assembly of God church. I mention this not as an attack on the Assembly of God or those who choose to worship there. I’ll leave it to you, the reader, to decide what this may or may not say about the man nominated to be the Attorney General of the United States and how such beliefs may impact the performance of his duties and if they might conflict with his personal/religious beliefs.
All text below is taken from: http://www.ag.org/top/ (the official Assembly of God web page I believe).
Let’s see… A few days ago, the conservatives were pissed about Gore selecting moderates such as Powell and Whitman (a woman the National Review referred to as “a politician of no import except to underemployed and overopinionated women who drive SUVs to buy bottled water”). Now the left is pissed because of Ashcroft. Welcome to the world of “politics.” Anyone who thought the cabinet would be a richly diversified (in terms of color, religion, gender, ethnicity or what-have-you) bastion of moderate beliefs epitomizing Bush’s “promise” to unite and engage in bipartisanship is woefully naive. Question: How does Bush garner support from the right to put moderates on the cabinet? Answer: by nominating mossbacks for other positions.
I think it’s clear the far right, like the left, thought Bush’s statements of bipartisanship were smoke and mirrors and that he would show his true conservative colors ASAP. Well, he hasn’t–he’s appeasing the right to gain the middle. Horses are being traded. That being said, Ashcroft is, I think, a bad pick–he has a lot of baggage that moderates and liberals are uncomfortable with, but the histrionic hand-wringing on the left is and will be largely unjustified. IMHO, Ms. Reno has been far from a good AG in her selective and, at times, heavy handed law enforcement
Just as Clinton didn’t lose his political legitimacy as a centrist when he had to cut deals by occasionally catering to the nut jobs on the left (the Guinier selection, for example), neither should Bush be stripped of his moderate epaulettes simply because he has to do something for his own nut jobs. People aren’t going to like every choice that Bush makes, but the fear that his administration is going to be a puppet of the right wing that results in such fundamentally misapprehended policy choices that any thinking person will catch a plane to France and spend the next four years in Left Bank cafes talking wistfully with Alec Baldwin about the genius of Al Gore’s references to Husserle in his interview with the New York Times Sunday Magazine is, I think, not likely to come to pass.
Nathan Bedford Forrest has a lot to answer for, as a wealthy planter who fought for the Confederacy and established an early incarnation of the Klan. For the sake of historical accuracy though, it should be pointed out that “Come Ride With NBF” probably refers to his highly successful career as a cavalry leader during the Civil War.
I always thought one of the more bizarre vestiges of the Civil War was having a low-income housing project in Selma, Alabama which up until recently was called the Nathan Bedford Forrest Homes. Sort of like creating a development in a predominantly Jewish area and calling it the Erwin Rommel Estates.
I’m all for keeping cauldrons hot and fires burning. I just think you pick battles you have a chance of winning. Go ahead and ask all the tough questions you want in the hearing but, barring his making some public justification of slavery or the like, Ashcroft will be AG. Smart pols will prepare for that event.
Actually, I think a lot of voters are “woefully naive” and they also get a lot of their news from TV and a lot of their political information from 30-second-long commercials. But that doesn’t mean that it’s not worth pointing out that Bush has veered far to the right of his “unifier” rhetoric. Moreover, if Bush were truly opposed to the far-right he would not necessarily need to placate them. It’s not as though he will have to worry about them supporting the Democrats in 2004. And, unless he is as disaster, it’s not likely he will face much of a primary challenge. Arguably, with a split Senate and a close House, Bush should be doing everything he can (as he did in the campaign) to pander to the center so as to attract more bipartisan support. IMO, Bush is far more conservative than he lets on: his “compassionate” and “unifier” rhetoric is the real disguise, rather than the other way around.
“I think it’s clear the far right, like the left, thought Bush’s statements of bipartisanship were smoke and mirrors and that he would show his true conservative colors ASAP. Well, he hasn’t–he’s appeasing the right to gain the middle.”
I think that remains to be seen. As I said, Bush has more reasons for wanting to appear moderate than he has reasons for needing to placate the hard-right. I’m not suggesting that Bush is genuinely aching to hang out at Bob Jones University or join the Klan; but I would place his actual political leanings along the lines of Dick Cheney’s record. And Cheney is no moderate.
“Just as Clinton didn’t lose his political legitimacy as a centrist when he had to cut deals by occasionally catering to the nut jobs on the left (the Guinier selection, for example),…”
With that single, infamous and ultimately unsuccessful exception, what sort of “nut job” left appointments did Clinton make? Clinton has been widely criticized by leftish lefties for drifting further and further towards the right. (For the record, if left-wing adds up to “nut job” in your vocabulary, then please think of me as a big juicy cashew.)
*“People aren’t going to like every choice that Bush makes, but the fear that his administration is going to be a puppet of the right wing…[etc.]” *
Well, all this remains to be seen. I for one agree with Jeff_42’s analysis of the AG function. It’s is a particularly dangerous spot in which to place one’s hard-right “token,” if that’s what Ashcroft is supposed to be.
Even more- what particular views of or positions advocated by Guinere can you cite to justify the “nut job” classification? I do remember one of her critics being quoted as not liking her “funny name, funny hair,” but what else was there? I of course mean true positions, not the lies the right wing spewed to kill her nomination. I think Clinton’s caving on that nomination is a very bad point in his record. JDM
I think ol’ Lady Guinevere (as long as we’re misspelling her name, why not go all the way?) was reviled by some for her advocacy of proportional representation.
My favorite Clinton “nut job” appointee was Carol Downer* of the EPA.
*I know this is misspelled too, but it makes sense if you think about it.
