WHAT A HEEL!: Beg Your Pardon?
In a column aptly titled "Standing By The Wrong Guy," Robert Novak neatly sums up why President Bush has not one red cent of political capital left with conservatives:
Just when it seemed George W. Bush's sinking prestige with his Republican base had bottomed out, his stock hit new lows. The president's seeming indifference to the sentencing of Scooter Libby was bad enough. But it coincided with Bush's apparent determination to retain his friend Alberto Gonzales as attorney general against congressional pressure to depose him. …
The treatment of Lewis Libby, once Vice President Cheney's influential chief of staff, enrages Republicans far more than their public utterances suggest. The president's studied distance from the CIA leak case led to the appointment of a special prosecutor by then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey at a time when Comey already knew the leaker's identity. That distance has continued with Bush's response from Europe to Libby's conviction; it was filtered through a deputy press secretary, emphasizing that he had no intention of issuing a pardon.
One Republican who did not watch her words last week was Washington lawyer Victoria Toensing: "If the president can pardon 12 million illegal immigrants, he can pardon Scooter Libby." [Emphasis, The Stiletto’s.]
Back in February, Toensing (a deputy assistant attorney general in the Reagan administration) wrote a column in the WaPo listing "bills of indictment" against Patrick Fitzgerald, Joe Wilson, Ari Fleischer, Richard Armitage, the CIA, the DOJ and the media in the Valerie Plame leak case. It’s worth re-reading.
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