Marie Cocco on Democratic Senators' Cowardice re: Gonzales

Democrats' Fury, and Values, Go AWOL:

No senator has come forward to oppose Gonzales. Senate Republicans coalesce around their commander-in-chief. Senate Democrats coalesce around a strategy of convenient fecklessness.

The Democrats are, of course, opposed to torture. They have, they say, 'serious questions' or 'grave concerns' or 'deep reservations' about Gonzales' record on the subject. And they are, most all of them, planning to vote for him anyway.

Just like most of them voted to give the president authority to invade Iraq, even though they had serious questions and grave concerns and deep reservations about that, too. The Iraq war vote, more than anything, is what ignited the Dean insurgency. There was this sense - a correct one - that Democrats in Washington would not stand up to stop George W. Bush even when they sensed the president was driving us over a precipice.

Now these senators are poised to take the following position: They are against torture but they are for the man who set the stage for torture.

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Enabling the Bush administration's habit of escaping accountability for even the grossest failure isn't smart politics. It's cowardice. If Democrats are to compete on the political turf of values, they'd better find some they stand for.