LA Times Poll: Most say Gonzales should quit over fired prosecutors

The Los Angeles Times poll results for April 11, 2007. From The Los Angeles Times.

There are a couple of interesting details regarding this Los Angeles Times Poll:

WASHINGTON -- Most Americans believe Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales should resign because of the controversy over his office's firing of federal prosecutors, and a big majority want White House aides to testify under oath about the issue, the Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg Poll has found.

The survey, conducted Thursday through Monday, found that 53% said Gonzales should step down because he claimed he had no role in the dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys last year — an account later contradicted by Justice Department documents and congressional testimony by his top assistant.

Senate and House Democratic leaders have asked White House aides to testify under oath about the firings, in part to answer questions about the roles of Gonzales and Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political strategist. Bush has rejected those requests, but the poll found that 74% of the public believes his aides, including Rove, should comply.

Even among Republicans, 49% said they thought the aides should testify; 43% said they should not.

[....]

Respondents were divided along party lines as to whether Gonzales should resign. Among Democrats, 68% said he should do so; among Republicans, 33% said he should depart.

Independents tip the balance — 57% said they supported calls for his resignation, while 22% said they thought he should stay.

First, the American public is not buying the Bush administration's excuses that the attorney firings were business as usual here, or even that Gonzales had no involvement in this scandal. A majority of Americans want Gonzales to resign from his position as Attorney General. Even more revealing here is that an overwhelming three-quarters of Americans surveyed want Karl Rove to testify, in spite of President Bush's rejection. The American public is not accepting the Bush administration's spin on this issue.

Now for a second little interesting detail from this LA Times poll:

On another issue, the poll found that Americans are also split along partisan lines over pending congressional legislation that would provide new funding for the war in Iraq, but require a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from the country.

Asked whether Bush should accept or veto a bill that included a timetable, 48% said he should sign such a measure while 43% said he should reject it. A significant majority of Democrats — 74% — backed signing the bill; an even bigger majority of Republicans, 80%, supported a veto.

Bush has pledged to veto a war funding bill if Congress sends it to him with withdrawal language.

If the president carries out his promise, Democratic voters do not want the party's legislators in Washington to reach an accord with him.

Some Democratic congressional leaders have conceded that that they almost assuredly cannot get the two-thirds majorities in the House and Senate needed to override a veto. So they would then face a choice between approving the war funding bill without a timetable or blocking the money — and come under withering criticism from Bush for failing to support U.S. troops on the battlefield.

Given that choice, 66% of Democrats want Congress to hold firm and withhold the funding unless Bush accepts some conditions for a troop withdrawal.

Among Republicans, 73% say they want Congress to fund the war without conditions.

There is a slight majority of Americans who believe that President Bush should sign the war funding bill that includes the timetable. But this poll comes with a major political split between the parties, where a majority of Democrats back signing the bill, while a majority of Republicans support the veto. So not only has become a political partisan issue between the Democratic Congress and a Republican White House, but the issue is also sharply dividing the American public according to their political parties. The war in Iraq, and either to continued funding or withdrawal of American troops, is now both the dividing, and defining issue, for the 2008 elections.

What is important to understand about this Bush administration is that it is completely out-of-touch with reality, and that the Bush White House is constantly under siege on all issues. You can see this in the Bush administration's aggressive, almost blustering posture of welcoming a showdown with the Democrats in both the attorney purge scandal and the Iraq war funding. President Bush refuses to sack his attorney general, even though the LA Times poll shows that Americans believe Gonzales should resign. You can bet that the administration will invoke executive privilege in order to shield Karl Rove from testifying before Congress. And yet, the Times story also shows that an overwhelming majority wants Rove to testify. The Bush White House is out-of-touch with the reality of what the American people want their president to do in the attorney scandal. The administration is also out-of-touch with the numerous poll numbers showing that the American people are dissatisfied with President Bush's handling of Iraq. The Bush administration is out-of-touch with the American people on stem cell research, threatening a veto on this latest Senate passage of a bill loosening the administration's restrictions on stem cell research. This is an administration that is completely out-of-touch with any sense of reality--a president who lives in a bubble of isolation. It is no wonder that this administration has bunkered down into a siege mentality, attacking opponents on every issue--Iraq, the attorney purge, illegal domestic spying, stem cells, health care, and just about any other issue that comes up. For this Bush White House, there is no compromise on anything. It gives the perception that this Bush administration is an administration of shrill, denial, finger-pointing, and belligerence. The more this administration engages in this behavior, the worst they become.