1/17/01 6:40 p.m.
Playing the Race Card
The Democrat strategy to label Ashcroft a racist.

By Byron York, NR’s White House correspondent

lavery was abhorrent," declared attorney general-designate John Ashcroft on the second day of his confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Under intense questioning from Democrats, Ashcroft also revealed that he believes Abraham Lincoln should not have been assassinated, and that if he, John Ashcroft, had fought in the Civil War, he would have fought for Ulysses S. Grant.

Ashcroft's statements — not the usual fare of Senate confirmation proceedings — came in a series of extraordinary exchanges in which committee Democrats, while not directly accusing him of racism, attempted to suggest he is so insensitive to the concerns of black Americans that he should not be confirmed. "I want you to understand why people are suspect [sic]," Delaware senator Joseph Biden said as he grilled Ashcroft about an interview Ashcroft gave to Southern Partisan magazine. "Your ideology blinds you to an equal application of, not just the law, but the facts."

While offering a solid defense of his views on race and equality, Ashcroft was less sure in his discussion of Southern Partisan. "I can't say that I knew very much at all about the magazine," at the time he did the telephone interview, Ashcroft told the committee, adding that he had done interviews with many other publications, including Mother Jones, with which he was unfamiliar or with whose editorial positions he did not agree. Ashcroft said his staff had told him the magazine was devoted to history, and that he did not agree with many of the things in it.

The issue of race also played a major role in an earlier line of questioning in which another Democrat, Richard Durbin of Illinois, raised the subject of Ashcroft's opposition to the federal judiciary nomination of judge Ronnie White. Durbin and Ashcroft argued at length over the case of Missouri v. Johnson, a death-penalty case in which White favored giving a murderer a new trial. Jimmy Johnson, the defendant who confessed to and was convicted of killing four people, claimed that he deserved a new trial because his lawyer was allegedly incompetent. White, alone among judges on the Missouri court, agreed.

Ashcroft strongly defended his decision to oppose White on the basis of the Johnson case. Johnson and his lawyer, Ashcroft said, had mounted a preposterous defense and, when that failed, tried to win a re-trial on the grounds that the defense was preposterous. "If you and your attorney concoct a lie and you win, you win," Ashcroft said. "If you concoct a lie and you lose, you get to claim incompetence of counsel and get a new trial." Ashcroft explained that neither Missouri law nor federal law requires a new trial in such cases. Besides, he added, there was — and is — no evidence of any error in the trial.

The Democrats' statements seemed to mimic a strategy adopted by the coalition of liberal interest groups that have organized a wide-ranging and well-funded campaign against Ashcroft. Most activists have refrained from calling Ashcroft a racist, while at the same time hinting broadly that he is. "I honestly believe the racism issue is a straw man," People for the American Way president Ralph Neas told National Review Online last week. "We do not contend that John Ashcroft is a racist, but we absolutely do think he's shown an insensitivity" to the concerns of black Americans.

Earlier in the day, before the race issue emerged, Democrats focused many of their attacks on the issue of abortion. As he did on Tuesday, Ashcroft stressed repeatedly his belief that the Roe v. Wade decision is "settled law." It was a position some Democrats were not prepared to accept.

"I sit here and listen and my jaw almost drops," New York senator Charles Schumer said to Ashcroft. "When did the law become settled? In 1998, you introduced . . . an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to ban abortion."

"If the law weren't settled, one wouldn't need a constitutional amendment to change it," Ashcroft replied.

Moving on, Schumer tried to suggest that Ashcroft's contention that Roe is "settled" must mean that Ashcroft now approves of it. Ashcroft patiently attempted to explain that a government official could enforce a law without personally agreeing with it. "I just want to indicate to you that if you think I have changed to believe that aborting unborn children is a good thing, I don't," he told Schumer. "But I know what it means to enforce the law, and I know what I believe the law is here, and I believe it is settled."

And that's the way it went all day. Democrats focused almost exclusively on race and abortion, the social issues most important to their most vocal constituencies. That in turn forced Republicans to defend Ashcroft on the same turf. And that meant nearly the entire hearing played out along the lines envisioned by the groups that make up the anti-Ashcroft coalition.

It's a trend that will no doubt continue on Thursday, when Ronnie White is scheduled to appear in a one-man panel. Democrats apparently believe Ashcroft will be confirmed — Joseph Biden said as much at the hearing — but not before he is forced to face every charge that they, and their supporters, want to throw at him.