Birmingham Blues

…and soon to be gone, according to Politico, which reports that the White House is already interviewing replacements.

Republican officials operating at the behest of the White House have begun seeking a possible successor to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, whose support among GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill has collapsed, according to party sources familiar with the discussions.

Among the names floated Monday by administration officials are Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and White House anti-terrorism coordinator Frances Townsend. Former Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson is a White House prospect. So is former solicitor general Theodore B. Olson, but sources were unsure whether he would want the job.

Michael Chertoff?  You have to be kidding me.  In the real world, Bush and Friends would have figured out by now that competence should be just a bit more important than blind loyalty, but I guess they’re still living in an alternate universe.  Hey, I wonder if that one has shrimp.  But I digress… 

Republican sources also disclosed that it is now a virtual certainty that Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty, whose incomplete and inaccurate congressional testimony about the prosecutors helped precipitate the crisis, will also resign shortly. Officials were debating whether Gonzales and McNulty should depart at the same time or whether McNulty should go a day or two after Gonzales. Still known as “The Judge” for his service on the Texas Supreme Court, Gonzales is one of the few remaining original Texans who came to Washington with President Bush.

It doesn’t look like the departures would derail a Congressional investigation.  Gonzales doesn’t have many supporters.  Interestingly enough, conservatives in Congress despise him for his supposed lack of ideological purity.  Republicans as well as Democrats are also unhappy with White House foot-dragging:

But officials on Capitol Hill said that after the Justice Department failed to turn over a batch of e-mails about the prosecutors on Friday as expected, Republican senators became less likely to defend Gonzales or the White House. They feared the delay signaled more damaging information was in the pipeline.

“We have a crisis where there doesn’t need to be one, and now Democrats have an issue where they can open up the subpoena floodgates,” said an exasperated Republican aide. “Once these investigations start, there always ends up being a lot of messy collateral damage.”

Hey, Republicans, maybe if y’all had investigated at least some of the myriad scandals that have plagued this administration, you could have brought W under control by now.  You’re the ones who let him believe he had unlimited power.  If he acts like a spoiled child, you have only yourselves to blame.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 19th, 2007 at 8:24 pm and is filed under Stupid Conservative Tricks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.