As the prosecutor purge scandal has grown more serious in recent weeks, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the number of [tag]conservative[/tag] voices criticizing the [tag]administration[/tag]. While many dismissed the controversy as a “non-story” initially, plenty of conservative blogs, magazines, and lawmakers have expressed concerns, particularly about [tag]Alberto Gonzales[/tag] staying on as [tag]Attorney General[/tag].
And then there’s the rest of the right, which doesn’t quite know what to do about this unpleasantness. Take, for example, National Review’s Mark Levin and his screed on the scandal yesterday. (via Jason Zengerle)
As Senate Judiciary Committee members continue to show that emails don’t comport with past statements and all the rest of it re the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, I guess I’m supposed to be outraged by all of it like some of my colleagues. I guess I’m supposed to fret about the political damage it will do to the Republican Party. Of course, the lib media are having a field day, denying their customers context and facts, as they continue to push the story…. But I choose not to join yet another wimp-a-thon, where phony scandals are made to look serious and too many Republicans and conservative pundits fire shots at their own people.
Is Alberto Gonzales a conservative? No. Was there an organized conservative effort to stop his nomination? No. Did the Republican majority in the Senate confirm him for his post? Yes. So, to argue now that one of the reasons he should go is because he’s not a conservative seems odd. Is Alberto Gonzales the smartest and most competent person to serve as attorney general? No. Did he botch the firing of the eight U.S. attorneys? I don’t know because I don’t [know] what the question means under these circumstances, i.e., this is a phony scandal.
Levin goes on to say that questioning Gonzales’ fitness for office is “throwing your own people to the liberal wolves,” “disloyal,” and “self-destructive.” He describes conservatives who take this scandal seriously as offering a “pusillanimous” response. (For good measure, Levin throws in a few rants about the Koresh compound, Ken Starr, and Elian Gonzalez.)
One could unpack all of this and detail all of Levin’s bizarre errors of fact and judgment, but there’s almost certainly no point. He clearly doesn’t want to consider the controversy on its merits. He could have saved himself some time and written, “Gonzales and I are on the same GOP team — and that’s all that matters.”
Not surprisingly, Rush Limbaugh is on the same page. Gonzales needs to stay on the job, Limbaugh explained, because anything less might undermine the GOP in the next election.
“I’m at a loss to understand why it is that even some people on our side and the conservative media think throwing Gonzales away is going to stop this. Now, they’ll say, ‘Well, that’s not what we’re trying to do. We want competence. We are conservatives, and we have high values, and high standards.’ This is a battle going on here. There’s an election that’s going to hinge on stuff like this, and everybody the administration throws overboard is a tantamount admission [sic] to people that pay scant attention to politics there’s all kinds of corruption going on in there.”
He went on to describe the 72% of Americans who believe there was something wrong with the prosecutor purge as “a bunch of blithering idiots who have no idea what they’re talking about.”
As Zengerle put it, “[B]ury it 10 feet underground in your backyard, and then walk away secure in the knowledge that some future generation will eventually discover it and marvel at its sheer lunacy.”