The New York Times quotes Newt Gingrich as calling for the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (AGAG).
The reason? Because of the corruption and cronyism? Nope. Because they exaggerated or invented charges against Democrats while ignoring enormous and blatant crimes of Republicans like those taking bribes from Jack Abramoff? No. Because he turned the Department of Justice into an election-stealing machine? Not even close. Torture, extraordinary rendition, eliminating basic rights like habeus corpus?
No way. The Newt's worried that the political attacks will make it impossible for AGAG to keep on doing these things.
Asked whether Mr. Gonzales should resign, Mr. Gingrich replied,"I cannot imagine how he is going to be effective for the rest of this administration."
If Newt had his way, AGAG would stay in office and continue to be "effective". It's those nasty Democrats and their political circus that are getting in the way of this dedicated man serving the public.
But but but... doesn't Newt think firing U.S. Attorneys for failing to be sufficiently "loyal Bushies" was improper? Nor lying to Congress about it? These questions aren't addressed directly in the article, but we can draw some inferences from this quote:
"This is the most mishandled, artificial, self-created mess that I can remember in the years, in the years I’ve been active in public life," Mr. Gingrich said on "Fox News Sunday."
"Artificial", of course, is codespeak for "There's no scandal here folks, just Democrats faking outrage for political advantage."
"Mishandled", in the current Republican lexicon, refers to AGAG's first identified lies to Congress. AGAG stated he was "not involved" in deciding which Attorneys were to be fired. When this was quickly proved to be untrue by the famous "Document Dump" of DOJ emails, AGAG said he didn't lie. Of course not. He was just "misinformed" by underlings. Or forgot that he attended meetings, "signed off" on the original eight firings that started the uproar, and spoke to Kyle Sampson "at least five times" about the matter. No lying here, folks, just "mishandling" of a "political circus". Nothing more serious than a failure of public relations.
"Self-created mess"? Well, he got that one right. Ya see, Newt, if you do stuff you know is wrong, you're likely to get in a mess when it's found out. Like the old cliche goes, if you don't want to do the time, don't do the crime. AGAG has got no one to blame but himself.