Specter, on the floor of the Senate today:
In a floor speech today, Arlen Specter, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary committee, suggested that Eric Holder, Barack Obama’s nominee for Attorney General, might follow in the footsteps of … Alberto Gonzales!
Gonzales was confirmed with a Senate vote of 60-36, with no Republicans voting against. I guess this means Holder’s confirmation is a lock.
TenguPhule
What it means is that Republicans secretly voted in their heads against Gonzo even if their bodies didn’t listen to them. They will correct that mistake this time around.
Play it again Sam!
Dreggas
Since when was it a bad thing to a republican to be like Gonzo? Oh wait….when it’s a democrat and the republicans aren’t in power…silly me.
El Cid
The past did not exist. Republicans have done nothing on record for the past 8 years. Some bad things happened but it had to do with Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Barney Frank. Other than that, none of them can remember having much influence over anything that may or may have not occurred.
crayz
Specter seemed to be referring to events that happened after he’d been confirmed. Specter at least gave lip service at the time of criticizing Gonzales, so it seems clear he regretted approving Gonzo long before Obama’s election
I’m a lefty but this just sounds like partisan whining to me. Republicans say there’s a number of things in Holder’s record that look ethically questionable and make him look like a kiss-ass. Being a kiss-ass was largely Gonzo’s problem. Can we as liberals just respond to the actual points being raised instead of just attacking people?
Should Holder have given the rubber stamp to Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich?
Keith
How friggin’ long does Specter think our collective memory is? I mean, it’s one thing to embellish history when talking about Reagan but all this crap just happened a few years ago!
bago
Wow, the turncoat who approved torture suddenly has issues?
kay
@crayz:
Good points. Holder shouldn’t have approved the Rich pardon.
He said (and says) that he was flooded with pardons at the end of Clinton’s term, and that he blew it, and he did.
It’s a black mark in a stellar career. Unfortunate, but it doesn’t concern me that much.
Gonzales wasn’t terrible because he was an ass-kisser, although he was an ass-kisser. He was terrible because he was unqualified, in way over his head. Easy to roll, by people like Addington and Yoo, because unqualified.
Ashcroft is ideologically opposite me, but he’s smart and he’s qualified. That’s the difference. It’s why Ashcroft was able to resist, to a certain extent.
crayz
OK, I hadn’t heard that. Any public official admitting a mistake makes me swoon a bit. Thumbs up
C
"How friggin’ long does Specter think our collective memory is?"
All they need is a media with a short memory. The 24/7 cycle is what matters.
kay
@crayz:
I think it’s a chance to restore what was a really stainless reputation, and erase the black mark. Careers are long. People screw up.
I hated the Rich pardon. I think Holder probably hates it more. Too, blaming your lawyer, as Clinton did, was lousy. The pardon power is absolute, as I understand it. There are DOJ "guidelines". He could have pardoned Rich regardless of Holder’s approval. I think Clinton laundered it thru Holder.
kommrade reproductive vigor
Who the fuck gives a flaming fuck about anything that stupid fucker says?
Come on Pennsylvania, you got rid of one dick hole, you can ditch the other.
Bob In Pacifica
Specter should be charged as an accessory after the fact in his "magic bullet" farce with the Warren Commission. Someone should ask him about the magic bullet every time he shows his ugly mug in public.
Balconespolitics
@El Cid:
No no. The War on Terra has all belonged to them. Well, except for the part where 3000 Americans died. That’s someone else’s fault, most likely Bill, or Jimmy Carter, or something. But the fact that another 3000 Americans haven’t died at the hands of terrorists in one day is all their’s. Really. They’ve also kept the elephants out of Times Square.
John S.
I bought a "Tiger Repellent System" from the GOP – it’s a large rock that sits on my front lawn.
Not ONE tiger attack since I got the thing, I tell ya!
O/T John’s new blogads are fucking awesome! If "Joe the Plumber" is the featured speaker at CPAC, Conservatism 2.0 should be renamed Conservatism UNIVAC.
burnspbesq
@John S.:
If the Republicans ever finish their re-branding exercise, we can call the New Republicans "Conservatism Vista."
KCinDC
Specter must really be much more afraid of another primary challenge from Toomey than of the general election. I’d have thought he might not be running for reelection, considering his age and health, but in that case what would be his excuse for pandering to the wingnuts so extravagantly as to resurrect the Elian Gonzalez insanity?
Napoleon
Honestly, if Spectors comment doesn’t wake up every Democrat, including the Democrat in Chief, of what bad faith and bs they are going to be dealing with the next 4-8 years I don’t know what will.