My best estimate is that some of the conservative true-believers were looking at the results of the Election of 2006 and trying to clear the decks for the Election of 2008. As close as the most recent Washington state Governor election was, they really want to be prepared to control legal outcomes of the is as close, and preferred to have a conservative true-believer as US Attorney. The same is true of New Mexico, where Rep. Heather Wilson (NM - R) will again face a very close election because of her clear weakness demonstrated in the 2006 election. Similarly, the Senate seat previously held by Paul Wellstone in Minnesota is up for reelection in 2008. (We now know that Al Franken will be running for that seat as a Democrat.) Again, that is expected to be a hard-fought election. Control of the legal ramifications of a very close election could well determine who will become the next Senator from Minnesota.
I don't know about the election situation in Nevada, but the fact that the Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is from Nevada has to have figured heavily in the calculations of the DoJ conservative true-believers. That they were able to remove the then Democratic Minority Leader Tom Daschle from South Dakota certainly rang a bell with them. I think that the DoJ guys were being honest when they said they were looking for someone more "active" than Daniel Bogden. Removing him without close coordination with Sen. Ensign was simply tone-deaf politics (read "typical conservative power-mad stupidity") by the DoJ people who made the decision.
Carol Lam from San Diego is an obvious case. She sent San Diego Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham to prison, and still has Rep. Dolittle in her sights. The clear Republican corruption badly damaged the entire national Republican Party in 2006, and more of the same would be nationally damaging to them in 2008. She obviously had to go. She was too honest.
Bud Cummings of Little Rock,Ark was a favor to Karl Rove. Rove's assistant needed the resume-enhancing job of U.S. Attorney. There may have been other reasons for Cummings to go, but there didn't need to be. Rove's power depends to a large extent on his ability to get patronage jobs for his best people, and this was one of them. Rove can reward and Rove can punish. As a result, he remains powerful as long as he holds his job and his office close to that of President Bush.
So there is a lot of politics. But the job of US Attorney is inherently political. That is, you get the job through political connections, and serve at the President's Pleasure. That explains getting the job and is why an incoming President normally replaces all 93 of them. However, the 93 US Attorneys are said to have a tight organization, and part of the culture is that while in the job, they enforce the law in a non-political manner. This culture is extremely good for American justice, but it did not meet the political desires of the aggressive and frightened conservatives who occupy the Attorney General's office.
Frightened Conservatives? Yeah, because the results of the 2006 election strongly suggested that if they didn't do something, they are on the way out. So someone in Justice is working hard to politicize the US Attorneys. It might not be Alberto Gonzales, but if not, it is done with his knowledge. But it is only 7 or 8 out of 93, right?
Keep in mind that only the ones who resisted pressure to "adjust" their legal practicesfor best Republican political outcomes have been removed. We have no idea which ones knuckled under - or even went along happily. We don't know how many these have been.
In addition, the hard-earned and up 'til now well-deserved reputation of US Attorneys for being honest and fair has been severely damaged. Anyone who has ever been a US Attorney and tried his best to uphold the best traditions of that position should be really angry at Alberto Gonzales and his merry band of conservatives.
This is extreme politics, even in the current age of extremist politics. On top ot that, it was handled so slopily that they had to be caught. To believe that they wouldn't be caught, the guys in DoJ had to believe that they were above the law, or perhaps that they were the law. That is not normal thinking.
The thing is, these conservatives are Right-Wing Authoritarians (RWA). They have a strong desire for conformity and obey the hierarchy even when it overrides their own sense of morality. As a result, they have a real tin-ear for the politics of a situation. Their leaders are RWAs with a strong desire for power and authority over others. the desire for power and authority shows that they have a strong Social Dominance orientation (SD). A strong Social Dominance orientation is one that overrides all morality and other considerations. If such peole are presented with two ways to accomplish a goal, one of which involves discussion and negotiation with others and the other of which involves the use of power to force the others to cooperate, these people will always choose the power-oriented solution. This explains the "tin-ear for politics" that they so often display. They don't trust other people and don't think that discussion will get what they want. In fact, discussion might give away their real goals, so they avoid it. Discussion makes the use of power more difficult because it warns their opponents. [See Bob Altemeyer's Book The Authoritarians and John Dean's book, Conservatives without Conscience. (And if enough people hit Bob Altemeyer's site, he may get his publishers to put out a hard copy for our libraries.)]
That's the information that I have so far, and what I suspect. New information may augment or modify this, but I don't expect it to disprove the thesis that this was a post-2006-election bit of planning for the coming 2008 election. And new information can be expected soon.
[Addendum - 9:52 PM CDT]
Did I say there was more information coming? Well here it is.
McClatchy blows it open. (See links in the title line at TPM) and
The New York Times has more.
[Addendum 2 - 03/11.2007 01:27 AM
This from McClatchy Washington Bureau (again):
The growing controversy over the Bush administration's abrupt dismissal of eight federal prosecutors raises a disturbing question: Has the Bush administration tried to use the federal government's vast law enforcement powers against its political enemies?Yeah, I'd say that all the remaining U.S. attorneys have gotten the message - Ethics get you fired, politics protect you from retribution.
"It would be enormously problematic if, in fact, the Justice Department or the White House were trying to use U.S. attorneys for political purposes," said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia. "The questions are now hanging in the air."
Some Democrats hear echoes of Watergate in the administration's dismissals of the prosecutors and suggest that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales should resign. Others want to know whether Karl Rove, Bush's chief political adviser, played a role in the firings.[Snip]
Lawmakers in both political parties have expressed concern about evidence of political meddling in the weeks prior to last November's elections, when it was becoming clear that Democrats might take control of Congress for the first time in 12 years.[Snip]
"U.S. attorneys and assistant U.S. attorneys take an oath to exercise their authority without fear or favor. It would be a gross abuse of power to allow partisan political considerations to enter into their decisions," said Bruce Green, a former U.S. attorney and a leading expert on legal ethics.[Snip]
"Most of the U.S. attorneys had pretty good evaluations, and some of them had stunningly good evaluations. Some did not," he said. "It's not that all eight of them were incompetent and should have been fired."
Hofstra Professor Freedman said he's troubled by the thought that Bush appointees might have been pushed beyond their ethical boundaries, despite their ties to the administration.
"These were people who were acceptable to this administration for really important positions. You would expect that, up to a point, they would go along," he said.
Freedman said the controversy raises questions about the independence of every U.S. attorney.
"They certainly have gotten the message, haven't they," he said.
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