…not resurrect this distempered mutt, as BushCo is trying to do at the eleventh hour:
John Bolton’s prospects for staying on as U.N. ambassador essentially died Thursday as Democrats and a pivotal Republican said they would continue to oppose his nomination.
It was another blow to President Bush, two days after Democrats triumphed in elections that will give them control of Congress next year. On Wednesday, Bush had announced that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, a polarizing figure and face of the Iraq war, would step down.
On Thursday, the White House resubmitted Bolton’s nomination to the Senate, where the appointment has languished for more than a year. Bush appointed him to the job temporarily in August 2005 while Congress was in recess, an appointment that will expire when the Congress adjourns, no later than January.
Sen. Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., who was defeated by Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse on Tuesday, told reporters in Rhode Island that he would continue opposing Bolton. That would likely deny Republicans the votes needed to move Bolton’s nomination from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to the full Senate.
“The American people have spoken out against the president’s agenda on a number of fronts, and presumably one of those is on foreign policy,” Chafee said. “And at this late stage in my term, I’m not going to endorse something the American people have spoke out against.”
God bless Lincoln Chafee, quite possibly the only unrepugnant Republican still in office, for abiding by the will of the electorate–who are, at the end of the day, the real power-brokers in Washington, as it would behoove BushCo to remember.
