A no-confidence vote in Gonzales

May 17, 2007

About a month ago, after the White House refused to even consider replacing Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Roll Call reported that Senate Dems were “seriously considering bringing a resolution to the floor expressing no confidence in Gonzales.”

A senior leadership source told Roll Call the measure would be non-binding — Congress can’t force the president to fire members of his cabinet — but it would a) make it abundantly, officially clear that Gonzales had lost the support of Congress; and b) put Senate Republicans on the spot, either standing with an incompetent and helplessly dishonest AG or standing against him.

And then … nothing. The idea seemed to quickly vanish, and no one’s really talked about the idea since. That is, until today.

At a press conference moments ago, Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) called on the Senate to hold a no-confidence vote on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

FEINSTEIN: I join with Sen. Schumer in saying I think the time has come for the Senate to express its will. And that will is simply to say that we lack confidence in Attorney General Gonzales. I don’t like saying this. I very much regret saying it. I want to say exactly the opposite. But in view of what I know, I can’t.

Whether it was the torture memo, whether it’s Guantanamo, whether it’s Geneva Convention, whether it’s U.S. Attorneys, whether it’s I don’t know I can’t recall, a department as major as this, I don’t think the American people are well served. I’m hopeful this can be worked out. But there comes a time when you have to say what you think, and this is what I think.

So, what happens now?

Once a resolution is introduced, Senate Dems should flock to it fairly quickly. Three Senate Republicans have already called for Gonzales’ ouster, and they’ll likely endorse the measure, if not sign on as co-sponsors. The White House will denounce it, of course, but on this, the president doesn’t get a vote.

It would almost certainly put most of the GOP caucus in an awkward position. Criticizing Gonzales is one thing, calling on the president to replace him is another, but voting for a no-confidence resolution is one step shy of impeachment. Will the Republican caucus embrace a man already exposed as a liar and probable law-breaker? Does the GOP dare filibuster? Would they have the votes to keep it up?

Perhaps the bigger question is what the White House does. Let’s say the resolution passes, which I think is pretty likely. Would the president keep an Attorney General that officially lost the confidence of Congress?

I wouldn’t put it past him.

One White House adviser (who asked not to be ID’ed talking about sensitive issues) said the support reflected Bush’s own view that a Gonzales resignation would embolden the Dems to go after other targets — like Karl Rove. “This is about Bush saying, ‘Screw you’,” said the adviser.

Stay tuned.

This is simultaenously great news…and not good enough.

Bush doesn’t govern, doesn’t lead, like he ought to anyway. His Administration is all about telling the followers what they want to hear, telling the detractors either a: they’re emboldening the enemy, or b: go f*** yourself, and doing whatever he wants to do anyway.

If there were to be a no-confidence vote, and it was unanimous, Bush still wouldn’t publicly fire Gonzo.

And until/unless Gonzo decides he ought to go, he’s not going to go. And Bush won’t make him go.

The no-confidence vote might convince Gonzo that it’s time to go, or convince other people within the Administration to convince him he has to go, but it’s all up to Alberto to do the right thing, something he has up until now been incapable of doing.

And why is he incapable of doing the right thing? I’m guessing, the bad he’s done, to the nation- to the rule of law, to the Constitution, to the GOP- is vast and terrifying and we’re only beginning to know the whole story. This Administration is like a living game of Jenga, and Gonzo is one of those pieces that will cause everythinbg to come tumbling down.

  • Ooooh, a no-confidence vote.

    I’ll bet that has Bush shaking in his boots. That is, until he figures out that it does not force him to do anything.

    If Democrats want Gonzales to stop being such a fucking hack, liar, and crook, then they should start talking about impeachment, and when people ask if that’s rash, they should retort, “This is years overdue; you’re lucky we’re not talking about felonies, conspiracies, and war crimes.”

    Does anyone seriously think we can count on “moderate” “sensible” Republicans to do *anything* to protect the rule of law, even by accident?

    Does anyone seriously think Bush is going to do anything he isn’t absolutely forced to do? (and in response to the predictable reply, that trying to force him to do things makes him not do them, I’d say, that’s exactly how he set it up, to blackmail us into letting him do what he wants all the time, and he gets away with it too damn much already.) Does anyone seriously think Republicans are going to do anything but help Bush run out the clock and avoid political accountability?

  • Who knows what Bush will do, or what the Republicans will do.

    WHO CARES?

    I care that the Democrats, who have known for months that Gonezales is a lying sack of crap, haven’t drawn a bead on his smirking face and blown him back to Texas.

    There are now FIVE Republican senators who have called for Gonezales to resign. He should have been up for impeachment long ago. I keep thinking that there must be some serious dirt that they have on the Democrats, there’s no other way to explain why they’ve been so timid in dealing with people who were clearly engaged in activities that severely undermine the United States of America.

  • I’m almost hoping that Bush says, ‘screw you’ to the Congress. My (admittedly faint) belief is that the R’s in Congress are getting sick of being treated like they don’t matter by ‘their’ President. If Bush tells them they’re irrelevant at this juncture, maybe a few more of them will start thinking that impeachment is the only way to save their stinkin’ jobs.

    Again, I don’t have much faith that this will happen, but I’m praying.

  • There is no point in making rational assumptions about what an irrational person will say or do. Bush is firmly entrenched at the stage of emotional development where he cannot tolerate even the appearance that he is doing anything because someone else “tells” him to. These calls for him to do something other than what he is already doing, or to replace someone he appointed or hired, are rejections of his judgment, and acceding to the demands means acknowledging his failures. He cannot do this because he lacks the maturity and the ability to interact with people in any way that requires him to admit that he is ever wrong.

    Aside from being dangerous, and subjecting us to the consequences of his failings, his inability to listen and learn means that all of these rational and reasoned arguments are only making him more determined than ever to prove that no one tells George Bush what to do.

    I think it is well past time to leave the president out of it altogether and if they can’t bring themselves to move to impeach, they should – at a minimum – move to appoint a special prosecutor, or pass a new independent counsel law, and stop allowing the head of the Justice Department to keep lying to the Congress and to the American people.

  • Oh, and Steve? When you ask this question:

    “Would the president keep an Attorney General that officially lost the confidence of Congress?”

    The proper analysis isn’t, “I wouldn’t put it past him” – it’s more like, “Why the hell shouldn’t he?”

    This is what happens when people – leaders, activists, regular citizens – take impeachment off the table. If you announce you won’t enforce rules, you shouldn’t be surprised when people break those rules, revel in their rebellion, and brag about it to all their friends.

  • Wingnuts will proclaim a no confidence vote as an empty pr stunt. I’m not saying they’ll be right, but they’ll have a point. Gonzo is a cancer on our government. The faster he can be eradicated, and the sooner his inflicted damage healed, the better. There are plenty of reasons to impeach him. What’s difficult to find is a reason not to.

    Dems should go with the no confidence vote if impeachment hearings do not produce an impeachment.

  • I hate to paraphrase the NRA, but can we just fucking enforce the laws we already have?

    Can we just fucking use the political mechanisms we already have?

    I like the idea of more and new laws and prosecutors investigating the Bush/Cheney Administration, but *all* of the new power and attention is *not* going to give us and our leaders the spine transplant that seems to be necessary to make them actually, you know, confront Bush and hold him accountable. Then, if that doesn’t work, we can take that to the people and say, “Look, these guys are a bunch of crooks and liars and they’re ruining the country. Elect more Democrats, or else they’re going to keep getting away with it. It’s that fucking simple.”

    And the thing is, it *is* that fucking simple. We *know* they’ve been breaking the law. We *know* they’ve been covering it up. There are things we can *do* about this – let’s start *doing* them, instead of hoping that our leaders can find a way to walk back from the abyss without having any further unpleasantries.

  • I blame Barbara Bush for all of this. If she had raised her kids right like most decent people, the world wouldn’t be in this mess. Shrub is behaving exactly as someone who’s never been held to account in his life would behave.

  • Why should he just have a no confidence vote when he obviously lied to Congress and he can be charged with purgery?

    I don’t understand this at all.
    Why is a lie about sex more heinous they a lie about breaking the 4th amendment?

  • OK, I’ve thought this through a little more. There’s not much else the Senate can do until it is presented with a bill of impeachment. Will a no confidence vote in the Senate prod the House leadership to start impeachment hearings? I’d like to think so. But then again, I’d much prefer if they didn’t need the prodding in the first place.

  • Hey Chris – here I thought you were this Casper Milquitoast kind of guy with all the solicitousness of FallWell. Good to see you are indeed a firebreather. 😉

  • Gonzo’s actual memory (not the one on display before congress) is his golden career insurance, and explains the wide smile of someone who should be worried about his job. Congress may not have confidence in Gonzo, but Gonzo has the confidence of a blackmailer that Bush will protect him.

  • What we need are Democrats in Congress who are firebreathers. What are they waiting for? An engraved invitation to begin impeachment proceedings against Gonzales?? Politics is like driving – sometimes you just have to insist on the right of way.

    I am so glad someone lit a fire under Feinstein. For a while there I thought she had fallen asleep.

  • If I put exactly one pound of rice in one side of a scale, and exactly one pound of rice in the other, then all it takes to tip the scale in either direction is one grain of rice.

    A no-confidence vote? Pretty meaningless, isn’t it? It’s got about as much “oomph” behind it as, say—one grain of rice.

    A tsunami begins with a mere drop of water; an avalanche begins with a single snowflake. I’m willing to sit back and watch that “one grain of rice” begin to tip the scales—because as mentioned above, a no-confidence vote is one step shy of impeachment….

  • Steve- unfortunately, a no-confidence vote in the U.S. system (not in European parliments, of course) is, for all intents and purposes, useless (particularly when you have a deaf Executive Branch like we have right now, who doesn’t care what law they break…).

    Frankly, I am not even sure that impeachment would be enough to remove these guys- Bush could very easily use the same logic as in his ‘signing statements’ and ignore it somehow.

    Faced with this sort of government, every single ‘3rd-world’ country chooses to use its military to forcibly remove the leadership. It’s a pity that we are so far behind them in our collective cognizance…

  • A no-confidence vote, although not very meaningful here in Bu$hylvania, is VERY meaningful in the rest of the world, and the repercussions will backfire on the WH bunker mentality. Bush may find rather quickly that he is “a coalition of one”—and the ramifications of foreign governments electing to talk with Congress, while snubbing the “official” US head-of-state will cause the chimp-in-chief’s ego to explode—quite literally—which should be enough to push another dozen or so right-side senators over to the “strong-side” of the line.

    Bush is dead in the water without global acquienscence. If the world turns its back on him, his economy goes down in flames, his precious military runs out of spare parts, his national food supply immediately shrinks by about 30%—and a whole lot of nasty ReThug donations simply dry up. His profiteering friends will not stand by him, at the expense of their ill-gotten fortunes….

  • Wouldn’t it be more fun to have a “confidence” vote? Something along the lines of ” I retain full faith and confidence in the A.G. etc., etc.” Force the Republicans to vote yes and hold their feet to the fire come elections, or have them abstain or vote no and hold their feet to the fire now! Everyone’s a winner!

  • I applaud Chris #10 too. We don’t need special laws. We don’t need useless no-confidence and non-binding votes. The Constitution is the foundation of our country. I’m no constitutional scholar, but even I see instances of Bush’s violation of the document and what it represents — and that the Constitution contains the solution to the problem. The founding fathers knew that a George Bush would eventually be elected. That’s why they wrote a damn good user’s manual.

  • (Tom #15: I gotta admit I’m not sure if you’re being slyly sarcastic (a similar comment about my rhetoric/positioning might be, “Wow, two straight comments without an f-bomb? Is that really you?”) or if you were actually worried at some point…)

  • Isn’t it interesting to see the so called Republican party who’s always parading the Constitution in front of us, The Federalist Society, etc, etc…. They always want to enforce it when it relates to Democrats and non-Republicans….. When it comes to Republicans who don’t follow the rules, we need ‘different’ rules…..

    The rule that has worked the best for the Republicans so far has been the stalling tactic….

    I don’t remember…
    I don’t recall…
    High priced attorneys using every trick in the book to stall and postpone

    Most americans don’t even remember that “six months ago’ the Republicans promised certains things to happen today…. Today they want another 6 months for a slightly different approach, knowing full well that six months from now they already know nobody will hold them accountable for it… Repeat until January 2009
    Say no more….

  • The Dems holding a “no-confidence” vote on Abu G reminds me of that line about the unwisdom of bringing a knife to a gunfight.

    It should be beyond painfully obvious by now that raw power is the only thing these fuckers understand.

    Let ’em have it. Use the full power of the law to impeach the Attorney General whose contempt for the law and Constitution he swore to defend is palpable.

    Nobody–nobody–among the congressional Republicans will fall on his or her sword for that apparatchik scumbag. I believe a considerable number of them are, in fact, aching to stick it to the Duhciderer.

  • It looks like they could nail him to the barn door and put him in the slammer for 10yrs, if only they bestirred themselves. Much better than impeachment; cuts through a lot of cackle…
    http://tinyurl.com/3b78q5

  • Since the standard for impeachment is higher than that for the passage of a no-confidence vote the entire exercise serves one purpose: the Senate is publicly saying to Bush “we think this guy sucks and, by extension, so do you.”

    If impeachment was a real option, the Senate would be talking of it already.

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