No, no one cares. More precisely, no one actually believes that we are a torturing regime (or maybe even more precisely, no one wants to believe that, and so they ignore the indicators). Ironically, Abu Ghraib probably made it harder to prove this point. The absurdity of what happened in Iraq actually gives Bush an alibi, since he can claim that it is just a small number of people going over the top.
Institutional Democrats are far too cowardly to insist that a connection with torture goes all the way up to the President (since saying that Bush's personal counsel is responsible for legalizing torture is basically equivalent to saying that Bush is responsible for it). Remember also that the reds control the Congress, so any opposition is going to be shunted into a corner to make us look like whiny liberals.
You just can't get away with saying that our President is a bad man, unless his name is Bill Clinton, and the crime, a blow job. Our Republic is woefully ill-equipped to deal with an objectively evil President. Indeed, they will set it up so that if we complain then people will blame Democrats for splitting the nation even further (didn't you hear "the will of the people," Ogged?).
I predict that Gonzales will be approved with several (perhaps even more than single-digit) Democratic defections after a small debacle.
Now that Gonzales has been officially suggested for AG, may I suggest that your (our) official position be, "we bow humbly in the direction of our new Republican Overlords."
If they want to go after Gonzales, they need ot get Hispanic groups (and I'd really hate to do this, and I'm not sure they should, but) to "Tom" him. Point to American Taliban - Marin, CA white boy captured in Afghanistan, got a good lawyer, got a deal - and Padilla - Hispanic, poor, stupid, and "indefinitely detained" without counsel or hearing for a long long time. There are almost certainly equivalent examples from his tenure in Texas.
If they are going to do it, it's got to be from Hispanic groups, obviously, and it would be better coming (in kinder words) from someone like Richardson in NM (who, I think, is half-Hispanic). It probably won't work though - Bush did get historic Hispanic support - so it's probably best not to do.
But claiming Republicans are using race cynically will not work at all.
If they want to go after Gonzales, they need ot get Hispanic groups ... to "Tom" him.
That's a really good point.
And, in principle, it ought to work to say they're using race cynically, but you're right that they won't be able to pull it off (they won't even try).
I don't think you pre-emptively raise the issue of using his race cynically. You light into him on the torture memos, and then when they imply it's because of his race, you say, incredulously, "So you're telling me I'm not supposed to object to memos legalizing torture because of the color of the author's skin? What happened to the content of our character?"
Not that this will happen.
No no no. What you do is, you have commercials in which really seedy-looking young hispanic men tail an innocent white girl for a few blocks while shouting abusive things at her and making obscene gestures, while a hispanic narrator does a voice-over saying things like "Geneva Convention? Hey, ese, don't worry about it" or "The US is a real cholo, you know, we can torture whoever we want".
Then show the guys in a district attorney's office, and fade to "Attorney General?" in white on black, with laughter in the background.
Air it in upper-crusty areas, the types of places with gates and guards.
It's a good thing "ben w-lfs-n" isn't my real name.
Ultimately, we're not going to lose much of the Hispanic population in states we can put in play - I think Bush's present strength was a function of (a) his popularity in certain states (TX) and his popularity in certain communities (Cubans). I think we're OK in NV, NM, and CO (all of which we can put in play, it looks like). OK and states like that were long lost to us anyway.
But Republicans have a wierd coalition being built here - a lot of their strength, particularly in Red States, comes from the disaffected white male vote that believes Dems are in the pocket of minorities. A small shift in that vote would make an enormous difference to Democrats. And those guys, for example, HATE amnesty for illegal immigration. So Democrats need to make Republicans choose - Hispanics or disaffected white guys. And if they do it concurrent with Gonzales hearings, they can potentially tie Hispanic pandering to Bush. That (hopefully) will either force him to give up some of that white vote or betray the Hispanics in some Sister Soljah way down the line.
Not nice, but we have to start splitting the electorate up and picking up small pieces. We were, after all, pretty close on this one.
Ogged, you know I don't share your view of the significance of abu ghraib, but this AG thing is way over the line. The US is about to promoted the guy who helped make a case for torture-- isn't this like the international equivalent of Bush announcing his opposition to affirmative action on King's birthday?
You know what the Democrats should do? They should filibuster, but they should say it's not indefinite--they will be happy to allow a vote if the administration will release all the documents related to Abu Ghraib and the treatment of prisoners that they've refused to hand over, and the Republicans have refused to subpoena.