Dems Play Racial Politics

The real crime in the eyes of (mostly white) liberal Democrats is for any ethnic minority to be associated with the Republican Party. Their public contentions are just excuses:


(Boston Globe, AP)

WASHINGTON --Alberto Gonzales won Senate confirmation Thursday as attorney general despite Democratic accusations that he helped formulate White House policies that led to overseas prisoner abuse and was too beholden to President Bush to be the nation's top law enforcement official.

The Senate voted 60-36 to put the first Hispanic ever into the job, with all of the "no" votes coming from Democrats and Democratic-leaning Independent Jim Jeffords of Vermont. Last week, 12 Democrats and Jeffords voted against Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's confirmation.

Republicans and some Democrats praised Gonzales' life story: the grandson of Mexican immigrants who worked his way up to being President Bush's top lawyer in the White House.

Democrats praised Gonzales as well, but many said they couldn't look past his participation in administration policies they said had led to abuses that occurred in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They also complained that he refused to answer their questions on how those policies were created inside the White House.

"Mr. Gonzales was at the heart of the Bush administration's notorious decision to authorize our forces to commit flagrant acts of torture in the interrogation of detainees," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.