It is likely — though not entirely certain in these tumultuous times for the dangerously adrift Bush-Cheney administration — that the next Attorney General of the United States will be a conservative.
The question is whether he or she will be a conservative who disregards the Constitution — as did the disgraced and disgraceful Alberto Gonzales — or a conservative who respects the document.
Richard A. Viguerie, the political direct-mail pioneer who has been referred to as “the funding father of the conservative movement,” ought to understand the distinction better than just about anyone.
Viguerie has been at odds with the Bush-Cheney administration for the past several years — arguing, appropriately, that the current president and vice president have abandoned conservative principles in order to expand the power and authority of the federal government.
Last year, Viguerie authored a smart book on the subject, Conservatives Betrayed — How George W. Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause (Bonus Books). This year, he signed on with an even smarter initiative, the American Freedom Agenda, an effort by conservative leaders to reassert basic Constitutional principles by prohibiting warrantless spying, restoring habeas corpus, banning extraordinary rendition and torture, barring presidential signing statements and renewing open government protections.
The American Freedom Agenda, led by Viguerie, former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr, American Conservative Union chair David Keene, Reagan administration lawyer Bruce Fein and Viguerie has bluntly assessed the failings of the Bush-Cheney administration when it comes to defending the Constitution and the Republic it serves. “Especially since 9/11, the executive branch has chronically usurped legislative or judicial power, and has repeatedly claimed that the President is the law,” it declared. “The constitutional grievances against the White House are chilling, reminiscent of the kingly abuses that provoked the Declaration of Independence.”
In April, Viguerie, Keene, Barr, Fein and their allies signed a letter to President Bush calling for the firing of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. “Mr. Gonzales has presided over an unprecedented crippling of the Constitution’s time-honored checks and balances. He has brought rule of law into disrepute, and debased honesty as the coin of the realm,” they declared. “He has engendered the suspicion that partisan politics trumps evenhanded law enforcement in the Department of Justice.”
Now that Bush has fired Gonzales — and, make no mistake, the timing of the Attorney General’s exit on the eve of what will likely be Bush’s roughest month as president, confirms that this is not a willing exit — Viguerie is proposing a list of candidates to fill the nation’s top law-enforcement job.
Disappointingly, most of the names of Viguerie’s list are individuals who have sided with the Bush-Cheney administration in assaulting the Constitution. For instance, Viguerie suggests Chris Cox, the current chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. But in October, 2001, when he was serving in the House, Cox voted for the USA Patriot Act. House Republicans such as Texan Ron Paul and Idaho’s Butch Otter opposed the act because they recognized that it attacked basic Constitutional protections. By any reasonable measure, Cox failed the most critical Constitutional test of his congressional tenure.
The same goes for former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, a Patriot Act supporter in 2001 and defender in the years that followed. In 2006, Santorum also voted for the Military Commissions Act, which the American Freedom Agenda campaign has made a prime target of its criticism. From a Constitutional perspective, Santorum would be an atrocious choice to follow Gonzales.
Ted Olson, the Bush-Cheney administration’s Solicitor General from 2001 to 2004, failed at every critical turn to defend individual liberties, as did former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore, who chaired a congressional commission on terrorism that did a miserable job when it came to balancing security concerns and the duty to defend basic freedoms.
If Viguerie and other conservatives are serious about undoing the damage Bush, Cheney and Gonzales have caused to the Constitution, they need to come up with better choices than these.
Where to begin? Why not with Bruce Fein, the chairman of the American Freedom Agenda?
Fein is qualified. A much-published Harvard Law School graduate who served as an associate deputy attorney general from 1981 to 1982 and as general counsel to the Federal Communications Commission, he has frequently been called on by Republicans and Democrats to help them sort through prickly Constitutional issues.
Fein is a true conservative, and he would serve as a very conservative Attorney General. But he would take his oath of office seriously, particularly the section requiring him to defend the Constitution rather than the political whims of the president and vice president.
So why did Viguerie refrain from proposing the name of Fein, a candidate who would do everything that Viguerie and other true conservatives know must be done to remake and renew the Department of Justice as an agenda that respects the Constitution?
Unfortunately for his own ambitions, Fein is an sincere conservative. As such, the man Ronald Reagan trusted to enforce the laws of the land has called, most recently in an appearance we did together on “Bill Moyers’ Journal,” for the opening of impeachment hearings targeting President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Additionally, he was working with a Democratic congressman on articles of impeachment against Gonzales at the time of the Attorney General’s resignation.
Fein’s willingness to put principle above politics undoubtedly disqualifies him from consideration by Bush as a successor for Gonzales. But Viguerie and other Constitutional conservatives owe their compatriot — and their country — better. Anyone who is serious about cleaning up the mess at the Department of Justice knows that the job will not be done by lawyers who have, by their actions, shown that they do not understand the basic intentions or values of the nation’s founding document.
Bruce Fein’s name belongs on the list of conservatives who would make appropriate replacements for Alberto Gonzales. Indeed, Fein’s name should be at its top.
John Nichols’ new book is The Genius of Impeachment: The Founders’ Cure for Royalism. Rolling Stone’s Tim Dickinson hails it as a “nervy, acerbic, passionately argued history-cum-polemic [that] combines a rich examination of the parliamentary roots and past use of the ‘heroic medicine’ that is impeachment with a call for Democratic leaders to ‘reclaim and reuse the most vital tool handed to us by the founders for the defense of our most basic liberties.’”
Copyright © 2007 The Nation
In recent months I have heard rumors of the John Birch Society calling for a left-right alliance. For the life of me, I cannot imagine what such an alliance would look like, but for the life of me, I could not imagine Pat
Buchanan making sense to me(at least on a few things). Okay, conservatives,
I am listening…and I am willing to accept that some are genuinely committed to less intrusive government. I think Mr. Viguery has made that clear.
Does anyone honestly believe Bush is going to hire an Attorney General who’s in favor of his impeachment and has been publicly saying so for months?
Stop dreaming, Nichols.
Bush will hire a lawyer who, like Gonzo, will help him find ways to further destoy the US Constitution on a daily basis. And Democrats, as usual, will confirm him.
Bruce Fein is just the man for the job - in the fantasy world where he would get the job.
Bruce Fein is, indeed, a conservative. The Bush-Cheney regime is hardly conservative. It is, rather, fascist——certainly by Benito Mussolini’s definition of a governmental system wherein corporate power eclipses political authority. Add to this obvious state of affairs under Bush-Cheney: permanent warfare as foreign policy; state capitalism for favored plutocrats; and the holy trinity of domestic policy——racism, flag lapel pins and the Christian Taliban.
Bottom line: the Bush-Cheney regime has no interest in conservatives or conservatism.
Viguerie’s a strange bedfellow, but I’m crawling in with him on this one. Gonzales would be facing prosecution before he could say “Bruce Fein.”
Why does everyone think that Bush will go thru a confirmation hearing for a new AG? Is there any requirement that he put forth any replacement? Or can he just ride this one out with the temporary AG? My bet is that he is clearing the decks of all of his cronies so they won’t be around for the attack on Iran.
While we all focused on who he will nominate, what else is he up to? I bet that this is just another distraction.
Liberal, conservative, Repug, Dim or Know Nothing: The credentials of Fein and his appointment as AG would be the first step, the first time the “Uniter” found a positive way to unite us.
Too bad…can’t happen…not good for the base…not good for George…or Dick…can’t happen…won’t happen.
The new AG will be worse than your darkest nightmare. And the Dems will approve him. Vote Green.
Speaking of ‘pleasant dreams” -
How about Rove or Giuliani?
Appointing someone like Fein would be the equivalent of suicide. Bush clearly wants out ASAP, but he’s too much of a wimp to ever pull the trigger himself. Expect a loyalbushie in “bipartisan” costume, a la Powell.
Or there’s always the GOPathological unemployment line - DeLay, Frist, Newt anybody? Is there anything stopping a Libby appointment? Just to give us all the SuperBadFinger, how bout Monica? No, the other one. Craig? Fowley? Renzi? Duke? Franklin? Can one be an AG from prison? (Nothing a Cheneybush EO can’t “fix.”) What about Rush? Or Murdoch?
Ashcroft, The Sequel. Now that he’s, like, a justice league hero and all, and not the crazy Pentecostal racist he was last year…
I couldn’t agree more. Bruce Fein would be the best Conservative choice — he really DOES know the Constitution, constitutional law, and has a great respect for it and what the Founding Father’s intended when it was written. I saw him with Bill Moyers (3 times) and was extremely impressed with his integrity and respect for the rule of law. Too bad he won’t be chosen — it just ain’t gonna happen.
Bruce Fein’s got my vote for AG.
Republican or Democrat, we need integrity and we need it now.
SAD FOR THE NATION
Dear Katrina and all,
The Nation had me on the cover of its magazine in March 2005 as one of the new faces of the antiwar movement. At the end of 2005, John Nichols of The Nation named me “Progressive of the Year” and has since said that I am a true “Jeffersonian Democrat.” The Nation also invited me to its foundation dinner in NYC at the end of 2005, presumably to exploit my popularity to sell tickets.
The Nation’s editorial staff and other staff also invited me to talk with them about not supporting “pro-war” Democrats in any elections anymore, and the editors wrote an editorial stating that. Tom Hayden was also instrumental in formulating that policy.
Now they are supporting a “pro-war” Speaker of the House, who says she is against the occupation with her mouth but gives George more money to wage the war with her actions. They support a Speaker who has made a mockery of the Constitution as much as BushCo has.
The Nation just joins a long line of orgs, entities and persons who supported me while I challenged Bush and the Rethugs, but now that I recognize that it is the two-party system that is inherently corrupt and ruining our nation and the world, they are not just abandoning me but trying to undermine me and my candidacy. I believe in doing this, The Nation is also supporting the status quo of continuing war, death and the destruction of our middle class and way of life here in America.
I am not sad for myself, but sad for The Nation and our nation.
Maybe Katha Pollitt et al. should go to the Middle East and view the carnage that this Administration has caused with the complicity of the Democratic Party, which she so stridently defends.
Peace and Justice,
CINDY SHEEHAN
It could be Fein if he agrees to not bring impeachment for B/C. Putting all the other things gone awry aright first is a really good start. The Murder Twins can be brought to Justice in other ways.
Bush will still be looking for someone to do his dirty work at DOJ — look at the intimidation of Ashcroft and Ashcroft was on their side!!!!
Not only was Bush trying to stop investigations of corrupt Republicans and the administration’s election stealing, Bushco was trying to prosecute innocent people on trumped up charges of election fraud!!!!
I wonder if Fein would like to open an investigation of true election theft — the 2000 election.
The SC gang of 5 should be impeached — !!!
Let’s get the terminology straight– “Election Fraud” is not the same thing as “Voter Fraud”. Bushco was trying to prosecute innocent people on trumped up charges of “Voter Fraud”, or, to be more precise for failing to aggressively prosecute phony allegations of “Voter Fraud”.
“Election Fraud” is the systematic manipulation of elections to skew the official results in favor of one candidate over another. “Election Fraud” is what put Bush in the White House in 2000 and in 2004. Currently, the “machine” regularly produces a 6% to 8% “red-shift” in national presidential elections, but look for that number to climb as more e-voting systems are put in place.
Among other purposes, the rights’ hammering on the fake issue of “Voter Fraud” serves to confuse and distract people from the real issue, which is “Election Fraud”. Clear enough?
Rick Santorum? That would make for total annihilation of the word Justice. Between the DOJ and the Supreme Court over half of the country could be arrested for dozens of infractions against their right-wing-conservative-fundamentalist-christian adgenda. I am always amazed at the collective intellect of the founding fathers, that even with differences they were able to come together and map out a basic platform that withstand the test to time. Little did they know, even when including checks and balances, that their best laid plans could be nothing more than a puff of smoke when disregarded by the greed of a handful of thugs.
My top request, besides echoing Senator Schumer that the AG candidate respect the rule of law, is that the candidate NOT be a crony of George W. Bush. Bruce Fein would certainly meet both of these.
[Thanks, John, for all your work in support of the constitution — especially that underlining the need for impeachment.]
Bruce Fein. Yeah right. Fat chance.
Campaign spending limits now!