Throwing Gonzales Under the Bus

Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Jeff Zeleny have a nice run down on how President Bush wants to insulate himself from the prosecutor firing scandal. AG Gonzales takes “responsibility” but not blame. It was all D. Kyle Sampson’s fault. It is absurd to believe that Sampson did this by himself. So I believe Gonzales must resign. But as we see from this story, now the blame is being put on Harriet Miers who was not part of the Justice Department as she was White House Counsel.

And of course, Dan Bartlett offers us this lie:

With Mr. Bush traveling in Mexico, the White House insisted that the president’s role had been minimal and laid the blame primarily on Harriet E. Miers, who was White House counsel when the prosecutors lost their jobs and who stepped down in January. “The White House did not play a specific role in the list of the seven U.S. attorneys,” said Dan Bartlett, Mr. Bush’s counselor, referring to a Justice Department roster of those to be dismissed. But he said the White House, through Ms. Miers’s office, ultimately “signed off on the list.”

Further down in the story, it seems the real concern to this White House is whether this scandal will damage Bush himself. The probability that AG Gonzales will be forced out of office looks pretty high to me. That’s what one gets when one does Bush’s bidding. When trouble brews, it’s time to throw another pawn under the bus.

Update: Tbogg is placing a bet on the day we’ll see the AG resign.

If they’ve lost Cornyn, ‘Berto is a goner. I’m guessing Friday afternoon… late in the day.

Good luck Tbogg!

Update II: Andy McCarthy argues:

Now, no matter what you think of Gonzales’s performance, it would be a travesty to allow him to be forced out because the opposition has turned the USAtty fiasco into a referendum on abuse of presidential power. As there has been absolutely no abuse, they shouldn’t be allowed to win – which makes it all the more infuriating that Gonzales, if it would make the problem go away, seems only too eager to surrender an important executive prerogative, namely, the authority of the president, rather than the court, to appoint interim U.S. attorneys pending senate confirmation.

No abuse of power? Is McCarthy spinning or just utterly clueless?