by Joshua Micah Marshall (bio|email)
(December 25th, 2000 -- 8:57 PM EST)By all means read this excellent column
by USC law professor Erwin Chemerinsky in yesterday's Los Angeles Times.
After rehearsing the valid and increasingly well-known reasons for rejecting
John Ashcroft's nomination for Attorney General on the merits, Chemerinsky
proposes a broader, strategic rationale ... considering how many judicial
nominations are likely to be coming down the pike, Senate Democrats should
take this opportunity to make the ground rules clear: no hardcore
right-wingers on the bench or as AG, period. No 'ifs', 'ands', or 'buts'
about it. Chemerinsky says the Dems should even be willing to filibuster the
nomination if need be (and the need probably will be.) That makes good sense
(by none other than Talking Points himself!) makes the point more broadly.
George W. needs to understand that there's a price to be paid for jimmying
the lock and sneaking into the Oval Office by the back door. If Bush wants
smooth sailing during the cabinet confirmation process, the Dems need to tell
him: only moderates and mainstream conservatives get appointments to the
important posts, period. This isn't payback; just a recognition of the
reality of this election. And finally, why hasn't more been said about
Ashcroft's interview with the Southern Partisan magazine? I'd like to take
heaps of credit for being the first to mention this story late on the evening
of December 22nd. But, honestly, a few Nexis searches are all that's required
to get all the details. But a quick search on the self-same Nexis reveals
that only one article (that by Tom Edsall in the Washington Post) has even
mentioned the Southern Partisan interview since Ashcroft's nomination (and
even then only in passing). Isn't this sort of a big deal? Is it really too
much to ask that nominees for Attorney General not give interviews to crypto-
(or not-so-crypto) racist publications like the Southern Partisan? -- Josh
Marshall
(December 23rd, 2000 -- 2:26 AM EST)I was just going to lead off with another
hit on Attorney General designee John Ashcroft by telling you how he once
received an honorary degree from Bob Jones University. (During this year's
Senate campaign the late Mel Carnahan challenged Ashcroft to return the
degree. Ashcroft said he'd do so if Carnahan returned campaign contributions
from pro-choice groups -- an equation which tells you a lot about John
Ashcroft.) But then I thought: hey, maybe I'm being too hard on the guy. It's
not like he's off giving interviews to borderline-racist, Neo-Confederate
magazines after all. Right? Well, okay, maybe he is. Back in 1998 Ashcroft
gave an interview to Southern Partisan magazine in which he said that
''traditionalists must do more'' to defend Jefferson Davis, Stonewall
Jackson, and Robert E. Lee. ''We've all got to stand up and speak in this
respect," ! Ashcroft continued, "or else we'll be taught that these people were
giving their lives, subscribing their sacred fortunes and their honor to some
perverted agenda.'' Talking Points thought slavery was a "perverted agenda."
But, hey, let's not quibble. So what is the Southern Partisan magazine? The
Southern Partisan is a leading publication of the Neo-Confederate movement
which extols the Confederacy, Southern culture, and at least flirts with the
idea of Southern secession from the United States. It also has some rather
disturbing things to say about African-Americans. Talking Points doesn't want
to label the magazine racist; but it does publish many articles which most
people would likely find deeply racially offensive. Some examples? A 1984
article in the Southern Partisan argued that "Negroes, Asians, and Orientals
(is Japan the exception?); Hispanics, Latins, and Eastern Europeans; have no
temperam! ent for democracy, never had, and probably never will.... It may be
impolite and unpolitic to bring the subject up, but can our democratic system
endure unless we close up the frontiers to peoples who are not ...
predisposed to honor its assumptions?" In 1990 an article called David Duke
"a candidate concerned about `affirmative' discrimination, welfare
prolifigacy [sic], the taxation holocaust ... a Populist spokesperson for a
recapturing of the American ideal." A 1996 article claimed "slave owners ...
did not have a practice of breaking up slave families. If anything, they
encouraged strong slave families to further the slaves' peace and happiness."
(These quotes come courtesy of this excellent article on the Southern Partisan
and its editor by Benjamin Soskis in The New Republic.) And George W. wants
this guy in charge of enforcing the country's civil rights l! aws? -- Josh
Marshall
(December 23rd, 2000 -- 12:38 AM EST)Let's say a little more about John
Ashcroft and Ronnie White. (Who's Ashcroft? Who's White? See this post.) A
Talking Points Reader took me to task for implying that Ashcroft's opposition
to the White nomination was based on White's race. This was a fair criticism.
Had White been a black conservative, this reader argued, Ashcroft wouldn't
have had any problem with him. The problem was that White was a black liberal
or, perhaps better to say, a black non-conservative. But this sort of makes
my point? The question isn't whether White would have sailed through if he
were a black conservative. The question is whether White, with his judicial
philosophy, would have faced any problems if he were white. The answer, I
think, is almost certainly no. So the problem does seem to have been White's
race. Let's mention some other details! . In the course of Ashcroft's campaign
against White, he accused the judge of being ''pro-criminal and activist,''
exuding ''a serious bias against . . . the death penalty,'' and even ''a
tremendous bent toward criminal activity.'' Pretty ugly charges. Ashcroft
also lobbied Missouri law enforcement associations to oppose White's
nomination. And then used their opposition as a justification for his
opposition. But here's what really puts the lie to Ashcroft's argument.
Ashcroft's main charge against White was that he was too soft on the death
penalty. But consider this paragraph from an article by Stuart Taylor from
the National Journal in October 16th, 1999:
Judge White has voted to uphold 70 percent (41) of the 59 death sentences he
has reviewed, while voting to reverse the other 18, including 10 that were
unanimously reversed and three in which he was the only dissenter. That's a
bit below the 75 percent to 81 percent averages of the five current
Missouri Supreme Court judges whom Ashcroft himself appointed when he was
Governor, according to numbers compiled by the Missouri Democratic Party.
It's well above the 53 percent average of Elwood Thomas, the now-deceased
Ashcroft appointee whom White replaced in 1995.
In other words, White was at best only marginally more 'lenient' than the
judges Ashcroft himself had appointed while governor.
The best way to state the role race played in Ashcroft's decision comes from
one of Ashcroft's former supporters. Gentry Trotter, a black Republican who
raised funds for Ashcroft's earlier candidacies, resigned from Ashcroft's
2000 Senate campaign effort because of what he called Ashcroft's "marathon
public crucifixion and misinformation campaign of Judge White's record as a
competent jurist." He said he suspected Ashcroft had used a "different
yardstick" to measure White's record (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 8th,
1999). That is to say, one yardstick for whites, one for blacks.
Sounds about right.
Next up, the politics behind Ashcroft's opposition to Ronnie White and some
more trash talk about how John Ashcroft just loves Jefferson Davis. -- Josh
Marshall
(December 22nd, 2000 -- 5:08 PM EST)
Well, maybe I was wrong. But in this case I'm glad to be.
In the last post, I noted today's nomination of John Ashcroft, the thoroughly
odious out-going Senator from Missouri, as Attorney General.
Senators and former Senators are usually given an extremely soft ride in
cabinet confirmation hearings. And on first blush I, despairingly, predicted
it would be the same for Ashcroft.
But perhaps not.
Turns out Ashcroft was not so popular among his colleagues in the Senate,
though he's real chummy with Trent Lott. And key constituencies within the
Democratic party are already mobilizing, heatedly, in opposition. (On this
one I'm not kidding. Friday before Christmas, or no, phones and beepers and
faxes are ringing off the hook for liberals all over DC.)
Item One? Ashcroft's almost-single-handed torpedoing of the nomination of
Missouri Supreme Court Justice Ronnie White to a federal judgeship.
Ashcroft argued that his opposition to White's nomination was based on
White's insufficient commitment to the death penalty (White affirmed the
death penalty in only 71% of the cases which came before him.) But Ronnie
White is black and race was widely believed to have played a role in
Ashcroft's opposition. Colleagues of mine who have looked into the case (and
who don't make the charge lightly) believe that it was really more like the
sole reason for Ashcroft's opposition.
To say that Ashcroft has a lousy record on civil rights is rather generous.
Add to this the fact that Ashcroft is thoroughly hostile to women's rights,
gay rights, and abortion rights and you'll start to get a feel for why more
than a few Dems may decide to vote against him.
More anti-Ashcroft muckraking to follow.
P.S. Oh yeah, almost forget to mention it. After Ashcroft's defeat last month
he went on a sort of self-congratulation tour making invidious comparisons
between himself and Al Gore, arguing that he had done the right thing by not
contesting his close defeat to the late Mel Carnahan. He neglected to mention
that he lost to Carnahan by a bit more than 2% of the vote. In other words,
Ashcroft, unlike Gore, had no business even thinking about contesting the
vote. And the supposed legal claims he might have pursued were flimsy. Slate's
Tim Noah effortlessly dispatches Ashcroft's moronic gambit here.
-- Josh Marshall
(December 22nd, 2000 -- 11:46 AM EST)
So it's John Ashcroft for Attorney General.
Christian conservatives really wanted the Justice Department for themselves;
and it looks like they're going to get it. Most Republicans divide into four
categories: principled moderates, principled conservatives, wackos, and
hacks. Ashcroft covers categories three and four. John Ashcroft is really,
really not a good guy. But he's an out-going (as in voted-out-of-office)
senator, so he'll be confirmed in a second.
Montana Governor Marc Racicot (frequently made fun of by Talking Points) was
in line for AG but - according to press accounts - pulled himself out of the
running.
This is a good example of one of the flaws of contemporary journalism.
Racicot didn't pull himself out. He got negged by Bush (even after working
hard for the job by abasing himself shamelessly in Florida last month)
because of pressure from conservatives. But the Bushies say he pulled himself
out. And Racicot says the same. So no one reports the obvious: that he got
negged by Bush.
We can now get ready for the really odious appointees to get tapped by Bush
for Interior, Labor, Defense, Justice, etc.
But before we go on. Let's give credit where credit is due. Tommy Thompson
for HHS and Christie Whitman for EPA are rock-solid appointees. Would I have
appointed them? Of course, not. But that's not the standard to expect. Both
are mainstream conservatives who actually have real concern and knowledge
about the areas of public policy they'll be working on. So credit where
credit is due.
Next, return to the usual nastiness.
-- Josh Marshall
