Over the weekend, Republican insiders — from the Hill and the White House — were dishing to anyone who would listen about the need to replace Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General. As usual, The Decider is reluctant to acknowledge reality. “Everybody at the White House … all think he needs to go, but the president doesn’t,” said a Republican who consulted the Bush team on Friday. Another White House ally said Bush and Gonzales are in denial: “They’re the only two people on the planet Earth who don’t see it.”
In all likelihood, however, there’s more to it than just willful, head-in-the-sand ignorance. Bush is stubbornly standing by his man in part because everyone, everywhere is telling him not to.
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, conceding that a Gonzales resignation might still be inevitable. The trick, said the adviser, would be to find a graceful exit strategy for Bush’s old friend.
Now, it seems there are a couple of ways to look at this. On the one hand, there’s the emphasis on the president literally taking the screw-you attitude. David Kurtz described this as “an insolent president trying to govern by tricks. Nixon lives.”
And on the other hand, there’s the obvious concern that Karl Rove has to be protected at all costs.
Even after all we’ve learned about the prosecutor purge scandal, the politicization of U.S. Attorneys’ offices, and the corruption of the Justice Department for partisan ends, we still don’t know who came up with the idea of firing these prosecutors and why. Gonzales’ defense is that he was clueless, making decisions without any real knowledge, participating in important meetings that he quickly forgot about.
Digby noted this McClatchy article, which expained quite plainly, “Absent another explanation, the signs point to the White House and, at least in some degree, to the president’s political adviser, Karl Rove.”
David Iglesias, the former New Mexico U.S. attorney and one of the eight fired last year, said investigating the White House’s role is the logical next step – one that would follow existing clues about Rove’s involvement.
“If I were Congress, I would say, `If the attorney general doesn’t have answers, then who would?’ There’s enough evidence to indicate that Karl Rove was involved up to his eyeballs.”
Iglesias said another clue that the White House may have been the driving force is the relative lack of Justice Department documentation for the firings in the 6,000 pages of documents turned over to Congress.
“If you want to justify getting rid of someone, you should have at least some paper trail,” Iglesias said. “There’s been a remarkable absence of that. I’m wondering if the paper trail is at the White House.”
Even if Gonzales decides to step down – he says he won’t despite widespread Republican disappointment with his performance – Democrats say they’ll continue their probe into whether politics inappropriately influenced the firings.
“The arrow points more and more to the White House,” said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. “The one thing I can assure you of: This is not over, far from it.”
Of course, given all of this, the notion that Rove (and Miers and other senior WH aides) should answer questions from the Judiciary Committee in a closed “interview,” with no transcript and no oath, comes less and less tenable (not that it was reasonable before).
It’s the entertaining byproduct of Gonzales’ ridiculous performance last week — instead of answering questions and setting the record straight, the AG created new questions and intensified the scrutiny towards the White House.
Stay tuned.