Democrats Dianne Feinstein and Chuck Schumer, two key committee Democrats who said last week they would vote for confirmation, gave him the majority vote needed to advance his nomination. Every panel Republican voted for Mukasey and every other Democrat opposed the nomination.
Feinstein, D-Calif., argued that a leaderless Justice Department is "not in the best interest of the American people or of the department itself. That's worthy of consideration."
Saying she believes torture is illegal, Feinstein said Mukasey should not be denied confirmation "for failing to provide an absolute answer on this one subject."
Schumer, D-N.Y., who suggested Mukasey to the White House in the first place, countered that the nominee's statements against waterboarding and for purging politics from the Justice Department amount to the best deal Democrats could get from the Bush administration.
Protesters outside the Justice departmnt waterboarded each other in protest.
Protesters staged a waterboarding Monday outside the Justice Department, calling for a Senate committee to reject attorney general nominee Michael Mukasey because of his reluctance to define the interrogation tactic as torture.
Giggle.
The code pinkos were in attendance and booed and hissed when the nomination was announced.
When the full Senate votes it will be mostly along party lines, with Feinstein, Schumer and Lieberman voting with the Republicans to confirm Mukasey which would make the vote, if it goes as expected, 52-48 confirming Michael Mukasey.
Captain's Quarters points out that because Mukasey was Schumer's pick originally, the Democrats could have claimed a win on his nomination and then his confirmation, but as they are want to do, the majority of Democrats decided to fight against his nomination thereby handing a victory to the White House when Mukasey was confirmed.
They just don't know how to quit when they are ahead.
And here's where the Democrats almost literally snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. They had pressured the White House to dump Alberto Gonzales, who gave the administration plenty of reasons to succumb. Instead of appointing Ted Olson, the apparent first choice of the White House, Schumer pushed for Mukasey as a "consensus candidate" -- and won.
If the Democrats had left it at that, they could have claimed a significant victory over the White House. Instead, they engaged in a fruitless colloquy over whether waterboarding was illegal -- when Congress has the power to make it explicitly illegal at any time. Not only did that irony escape them, but towards the end of the debate, the White House announced that only three detainees had ever been waterboarded, and the practice was forbidden after 2003 in any case.
Leading Democrats demanded the withdrawal of Mukasey anyway. All of the Democratic presidential candidates insisted on it. The Bush administration made clear that the AG post would get filled in the recess if Mukasey didn't win confirmation, and likely by someone a lot less palatable than Mukasey. Schumer, who pushed Mukasey in the first place, had to find a wingman in Feinstein to get the Democrats out of the large hole in which he'd placed them.
The ACLU feels like Schumer and Feinstein staged a "surprise attack" against them.
Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) effectively thwarted plans by the activist left to use the weekend to mobilize ahead of Tuesday’s Judiciary Committee vote and pressure wayward senators to reject the nominee, activists said.
“It was a surprise attack,” said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the Washington legislative office for the American Civil Liberties Union, which wants the Judiciary Committee to defeat the nomination. “There was a limited opportunity to say much about what Schumer and Feinstein had done because the timing was very cleverly calculated to avoid scrutiny.”
With the support of Schumer, Feinstein and the committee’s nine Republicans, Mukasey has garnered enough support to clear the panel and move to the Senate floor.
As expected the netroots are giving Schumer and Feinstein and the whole democratic party hell for this and doing what they do best, which is pissing and moaning. Better yet are those totally abandoning hope.
The following picture was grabbed from the Heretik and is the best illustration of the netroots opinion and support for the Democratic politicians right now.
The problem here is that the Democrats could have claimed a victory, but just like with Iraq, they not only do not understand what victory is but they are incapable of grabbing it and holding onto when they have it. (Mukasey WAS Schumer's pick)
The netroots and the Democratic politicians that let themselves constantly be led over the edge of the cliff by the netroots are their own worse enemy.
Ohters discussing this:
Michelle Malkin and The Jawa Report.
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