> ... Jackson and other civil rights leaders have launched a campaign at
> the grassroots to pressure Democratic Senators on the Ashcroft
> nomination specifically and more generally on holding the line
> overall...
The budding Ashcroft campaign is reminiscent of the Clarence Thomas debacle, in a negative respect.
The main rap against Thomas was simple competence, but the Dems did not want to rest their case on this, so we ended up with public hairs.
The rap against Ashcroft seems to be shaping up as, he rejected Ronnie White because White is African- American. This seems to be a very weak line of argument. Maybe that's just the media vulgarization of the case.
Ashcroft's racism derives from his philosophical views on all policies relating to race, not to his decision on White. he is reported to have voted to confirm most black judges who have come up for confirmation (26 of 28). If this is true, he can't be faulted on racial grounds for rejecting White. he could be faulted for cockeyed views on criminal justice policy, but the relation of that to race is much more subtle then rejecting White for the bench because he is a minority. The White case might have race connotations if a white candidate with a similar record was accepted, but nobody has raised that possibility.
mbs