White House: No-confidence vote on Gonzales meaningless

11 Jun 2007 // The White House on Sunday dismissed Senate plans to hold a no-confidence vote on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Monday and said the outcome will not undermine President Bush's support of him.

"Not a bit. Purely symbolic vote," presidential spokesman Tony Snow said. He was asked on Fox News Sunday whether Bush might reconsider his decision to support Gonzales should a sizable number of Republican senators vote for the no-confidence resolution.

"It is perfectly obvious that the president has the right to hire and fire people who serve at his pleasure," Snow said.

The Senate planned to debate Monday the one-sentence measure that declares Gonzales "no longer holds the confidence of the Senate and of the American people."

Gonzales has been under fire for months for his role in the dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys. Internal Justice Department documents have contradicted Gonzales' initial comments that the firing of the federal prosecutors was not politically motivated or directly coordinated with the White House.

Majority Democrats in the Senate acknowledge that the no-confidence resolution probably will not survive a test vote Monday requiring 60 votes. Sen. Charles Schumer of New York defended the resolution as "substantive."

"Just about everyone in America has lost confidence in the attorney general and any other president … would have seen that Gonzales is not up to the job," he said.

Senate Republicans have not been eager to defend Gonzales, a longtime Bush friend and former White House counsel. At least five Republican senators have called for his resignation.

Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., who previously had been a reliable Gonzales ally on the Senate Judiciary Committee, declined on CNN to offer a public statement of support even while contending a no-confidence resolution was wrong.

"I'm not going to comment on the kind of job," said Kyl, when asked if Gonzales was an effective attorney general. "This isn't our form of government to have votes of no confidence. And I object to that process."

Sen. Dick Durbin, the Senate's No. 2 Democratic leader, said on Fox News Sunday that if Bush was willing to replace Gen. Peter Pace as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff because of concerns about diminished support in Congress, then the president should do the same and oust Gonzales.

"Here's a man who's been through rough sledding," said Durbin, D-Ill. "He's said some things on Capitol Hill which he's had to recant, who's had staff people say, well, things were being done in the Department of Justice that shouldn't be done, and the president's willing to stand by his man."

Snow called the upcoming Senate debate a waste of time and said it would not affect Gonzales' tenure at the Justice Department.

"Nobody's found anything untoward in terms of what happened," Snow said. "There's an attempt to sort of pull this thing like a piece of taffy and looking if there's any political advantage in it. There's not."

"What we'll end up having is people burning off a day expressing their opinions, and then we'll move on," he said.

Gonzales planned to speak Monday at a terrorism law enforcement conference in Miami.