In trying to get a sense of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ job security — he said this morning that his fate is in the president’s hands — I keep watching the GOP. The key Dems have said all the right things, including calling for his resignation, but Democratic pressure alone will probably not be enough to force Gonzales’ ouster.
So, how is the Attorney General’s Republican support holding up? Not very well. First, the White House appears to be wavering in its support.
With Democrats, including the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, insisting that Mr. Gonzales step down, his appearance underscored what two Republicans close to the Bush administration described as a growing rift between the White House and the attorney general. Mr. Gonzales has long been a confidant of the president but has aroused the ire of lawmakers of both parties on several issues, including the administration’s domestic eavesdropping program.
The two Republicans, who spoke anonymously so they could share private conversations with senior White House officials, said top aides to Mr. Bush, including Fred F. Fielding, the new White House counsel, were concerned that the controversy had so damaged Mr. Gonzales’s credibility that he would be unable to advance the White House agenda on national security matters, including terrorism prosecutions.
“I really think there’s a serious estrangement between the White House and Alberto now,” one of the Republicans said.
Second, congressional Republicans, traditionally loath to say a discouraging word about high-ranking administration officials, are acknowledging the fact that they’ve lost confidence in the Attorney General.
Many administration defenders had harsh words for the Justice Department. Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) called the department “dysfunctional,” while Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) said “the appearances are troubling” and criticized Gonzales’s handling of the issue.
“Everybody who’s appointed by the White House understands that they serve at the pleasure of the president,” said Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), whose home-state prosecutor was among those fired. He added that “a good leader does not just dismiss somebody for no good reason, especially if you haven’t done your job in the first place. And I don’t feel that the U.S. attorney general’s office did their job in the first place.”
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) last week led the defense of the administration and criticized Lam. But yesterday he said on PBS’s “NewsHour With Jim Lehrer” that “if someone led us astray, they should resign, and I don’t care how high it is, anyone involved with this coverup of giving us the truth needs to step down…. I am including anybody who would mislead, deliberately mislead the Congress…. If it’s the attorney general who had a hand in it, then he has to step down.”
Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said the handling of the U.S. Attorneys shows an “idiocy on the part of the administration.”
Sen. John Sununu (R-N.H.) said, “I certainly don’t have a lot of confidence in [Gonzales’] leadership.”
Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) said he was “not yet” calling for a resignation but added, “I think I share the feelings of many Republican senators that this is a profoundly disappointing event.”
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said, “I don’t think I’ve been given a clear explanation. I’ve taken all their public statements and what they said at the hearings at face value … and I’m pretty unhappy about that.”
GOP Whip Trent Lott (Miss.) declined to express confidence in Gonzales, describing the issue as “a personnel matter.”
About the only vote of confidence Gonzales received came from Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), a Judiciary member, who said he is “supporting the attorney general at this point.”
I suspect one of these lawmakers is going to call Josh Bolten fairly soon and say, “Time’s up; he has got to go.”