Being an avid follower of this scandal, I have decided to try and coagulate a set of talking points and talking point responses for the Republican talking points on the Attorneygate Eight/Dogate/Purgegate/Karl-Rove-tried-to-turn-America-into-a-one-party-State scandal.
I know that the concept of "talking points" has taken a credibility hit because of how Republicans have used them like bleating sheep straight out of Orwell's Animal Farm, but having seen a fair amount of internet debate going on about this topic, and more to come, it behooves us to have concise responses ready to sway the uninformed correctly, and make the Administration defenders look as foolish as they are.
Scientician's diary :: ::
Today, I will tackle a set of responses to the most common Republican talking points I have heard for this affair:
Republican talking point: Prosecutors serve at the pleasure of the President, they can be fired for any reason, even politics.
Response: James Madison certainly didn't agree
The danger then consists merely in this, the president can displace from office a man whose merits require that he should be continued in it. What will be the. So yes, he can fire people, but that doesn't mean he should. He was entrusted broad latitude in firing members of his branch without interference, but the very concept of "entrusting" someone with something, necessarily implies that it is possible to abuse that trust. If there was no possibility of abuse, there would be no question of trust in the first place.
motives which the president can feel for such abuse of his power, and the restraints that operate to prevent it? In the first place, he will be impeachable by this house, before the senate, for such an act of mal-administration; for I contend that the wanton removal of meritorious officers would subject him to impeachment and removal from his own high trust. Commondreams
Republican talking point: Democrats are just engaging in a partisan political investigation to win votes. This is wrong.
Response: If you're going to argue that Bush can use the DoJ to persecute Democrats to win elections, than you can hardly blame the Democrats for persecuting Bush with their investigatory powers. Turn and turn about. Investigations serve at the pleasure of congress. Of course, as Jay Carney with Time Magazine noted, Democrats were not initially all that concerned with the firings, until TalkingPointsMemo succeeded in bringing the story to the forefront:
When this story first surfaced, I thought the Bush White House and Justice Department were guilty of poorly executed acts of crass political patronage. I called some Democrats on the Hill; they were "concerned", but this was not a priority. The blogosphere was the engine on this story, pulling the Hill and the MSM along. As the document dump proves, what happened was much worse than I'd first thought. I was wrong. SwamplandSome partisan "witch hunt." Again, to Republicans, would you not be concerned to learn a Democratic administration had investigated Republicans 7 times as often as Democrats, the way this Administration has done to Democrats?
Republican talking point: Clinton fired all 93 USAs and you Democrats didn't care back then.
Response: Most of you know this one, but I'll just include it for completeness. It is their most frequent refrain.
No, Democrats did not complain, because firing political appointees like Federal Prosecutors is something that incoming Presidents are expected to do. This is
necessary and proper. No President should be expected to keep on the political appointees of the prior administration, particularly when the prior administration was from another party. News flash: Clinton fired all of George H.W. Bush's cabinet too! Further, as we now know, Reagan and George W. Bush did the same thing when taking office (the pace of firings may have varied a little, but replacing all 93 within the first year of a President's first term is par for the course). Finally, when Clinton fired all 93, you Republicans tried
to raise a stink about this!
Republican talking point: Clinton fired prosecutors in 1993 to stop the investigation of his friend Rep Dan Rostenkowski (D-Il)! It was a cover up!
Response: This is a comically bad conspiracy theory. It might have looked bad in 1993, but with the lens of history we can soundly refute it. The line goes that Rostenkowski, as chair of Ways and Means was a key ally of Clinton in trying to pass a Universal health care plan, so it was essential to protect him. It's plausible Clinton may have hoped that he could delay Rosty's indictment long enough to get his plan through Ways and Means, but the end result of this conspiracy was pretty freaking bad for Clinton and the Democrats. It's also plausible that Clinton didn't trust Bush I's prosecutor, and wanted a Democrat investigating Rosty instead. It's also possible Rosty had nothing to do with the decision to fire the Prosecutors.
In any case, Rostenkowski was indicted by Clinton's appointee for DC, Eric H. Holder in May 1994. This was after Rosty had just defeated a primary challenger, and, look, just in time for him to lose his ultra-safe Chicago seat in the 1994 deluge. Quel conspiracy! Do Republicans picture the Clintonistas plotting to indict Rosty with plenty of time for it to sink in across the electorate and have him defeated? Way to protect an ally.
Shorter response: Oh yeah? How come Rosty was still indicted, defeated for re-election in 1994, convicted and sent to prison. Some "cover up."
Republican talking point: Clinton fired the Arkansas investigator to cover up Whitewater!
Response: Media Matters refutes this one in detail. In summary: No, even George H.W. Bush's prosecutor, Charles Banks had declined to prosecute the Clintons over Whitewater, and thus there was no "ongoing investigation" to interrupt by replacing him. Not to mention that the matter would get investigated twice more, most notably by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr with an unlimited staff and budget. Charles A. Banks had himself resisted investigating the Whitewater matter, reportedly in defiance of pressure from George H.W. Bush administration officials in search of a pre-election issue with which to tar challenger Clinton.
Bonus Response: Tell you what Republicans, let's have a left wing equivalent of Kenneth Star, say John Kerry or Patrick Leahy (both former prosecutors) investigate Purgegate for 50 million dollars worth of time and staff, and if they fail to find anything, we'll call it even.
Republican talking point: Prosecutors are political appointees, and Presidents need to replace the ones who don't follow the broad political directives of the current Administration.
Response: This one is true. It doesn't apply to Purgegate in the slightest, but in the abtract, it's correct. If a Prosecutor was focusing their office's efforts on a type of crime that was not a priority for the Administration, to the detriment of another category of crime the Administration had vowed to tackle, that would be fair grounds for firing.
The problem is that no such credible grounds exist for these fired 8. Immigration? No, one of the released emails shows a DoJ official offering that as a suggested rationale, after the decision to fire them had already been made. Immigration was to be a proferred reason, but not the actual reason. Worse, in Carol Lam's case, we have Sampson testifying that no one at DoJ had ever spoken to her about her supposedly unacceptable record on Immigration cases. So it was such a big problem as to warrant firing her, but no one could pick up a phone and ask her to put more emphasis on immigration, the way any normal human boss would with an erring subordinate? Poppycock. In Iglesias' case, we know his name appears on a list of non-Bushie attorneys to be fired long before Republican congressional complaints about him appeared. Again, more rationalizations after the fact.
The short response is that no acceptable professional reason for the firings has been found or demonstrated by the Bush Administration. This talking point speaks to a possible acceptable reason to fire one, but the firings here do not meet that bar.
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