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 News from Around the Americas | June 2007 
US Republicans Block Gonzales No Confidence Vote
 Agence France-Presse
| | Attorney General Alberto Gonzales responds to a question during a news conference Monday, June 11, 2007, in Mobile, Ala., after meeting with members of the Mobile Project Safe Childhood Task Force at the Child Advocacy Center, a counseling center for sexually abused children. (AP/John David Mercer) |
Senate Republicans Monday blocked a Democratic vote of "no confidence" in besieged US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, sparing President George W. Bush another political hammer blow.
Seven Republicans however broke ranks and voted against the unusual non-binding resolution, sparked by a political maelstrom over the firing of eight federal prosecutors which critics said was politically motivated.
Support from other Republicans appeared grudging, as few spoke out in support of Gonzales, one of Bush's longest serving confidants, choosing instead to accuse Democrats of a cheap political trick.
Fifty-three senators voted to move to a final vote on the resolution, seven short of the total needed under Senate rules to keep the measure alive. A total of 38 senators voted against.
The symbolic text, which simply stated that Gonzales "no longer holds the confidence of the Senate and of the American people," was earlier lambasted by Bush as "meaningless" and politically motivated.
"They can try to have their votes of no confidence, but it's not going to determine who serves in my government," the president said in Bulgaria after a tour of Europe.
"I'll make the determination if I think he's effective, or not, not those who are using an opportunity to make a political statement on a meaningless resolution."
The Republicans' blocking maneuver spared Bush another political defeat, days after a landmark immigration reform bill collapsed in the US Senate.
Bush was unusually due to join Republican Senators for lunch on Tuesday, in a bid to resurrect the measure aimed at giving 12 million illegal immigrants a path to eventual citizenship.
Gonzales, who heads the US Department of Justice, faces calls to resign over allegations he fired federal prosecutors last year for purely political reasons to benefit Bush's Republican party. He has denied the charges.
Leading Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer accused Gonzales of repeatedly misleading the Congress and the American people.
"Where are the voices saying Gonzales should stay? Where in the Senate, where in the country, where in the legal community? It is amazing to me that President Bush keeps him on."
A handful of prominent Republicans, including Chuck Hagel and John McCain, have said Gonzales should resign or be fired. Hagel voted for the resolution, along with another prominent Republican Senator, Arlen Specter.
"Have I lost confidence in Attorney General Gonzales? Absolutely yes," said Specter.
McCain, a 2008 presidential candidate, did not vote.
Though the resolution fell, Democrats still forced Republicans to side with the unpopular president, a dicey political spot as congressional and presidential polls loom in 2008.
"This is a very disappointing spectacle here today," said Republican minority whip Senator Trent Lott.
"This is not the British parliament, are we going to bring the president in here and have a question period like the Prime Minister has in Great Britain?"
Gonzales spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said after the vote the attorney general would concentrate on doing his job, securing the United States, fighting gangs and drugs and shielding children from pedophiles and predators.
A former White House counsel, Gonzales is also intimately linked to some of the most controversial legal moves of the Bush presidency, including a decision that terror suspects were not covered by the Geneva Conventions on the rights of prisoners of war.
Democrats hoped Monday's debate would revive ethics questions hanging over the Bush administration.
It came days after former White House aide Lewis "Scooter" Libby was sentenced to jail for perjury, and weeks after Bush's former deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz agreed to resign as president of the World Bank over a favoritism scandal.
The row began in March when evidence from emails and testimony from a top former Department of Justice aide linked Gonzales to the sackings.
The Department of Justice has offered several explanations for the firings, and the attorney general himself angered lawmakers by insisting in testimony that he "can't recall" key aspects of the firings and his role in them. |
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