Bolton Battle

The disgraceful Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee have managed to browbeat a couple of Republican Senators, forcing the vote on his nomination to be delayed. The Democrats' stated reason for their opposition to Bolton is that he is a "serial abuser" of his subordinates. The evidence of this was quoted by Mark Steyn in an article last Sunday:

So I was interested to hear about the kind of violent Boltonian eruptions that had led Boxer to her diagnosis. Well, here it comes. (If you've got young children present, you might want to take them out of the room.) From the shockingly brutal testimony of Thomas Fingar, assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Intelligence Research:

Q: Could you characterize your meeting with Bolton? Was he calm?

Fingar: No, he was angry. He was standing up.

Q: Did he raise his voice to you? Did he point his finger in your face?

Fingar: I don't remember if he pointed. John speaks in such a low voice normally. Was it louder than normal? Probably. I wouldn't characterize it as screaming at me or anything like that. It was more, hands on hips, the body language as I recall it, I knew he was mad.

So Bolton put his hands on his hips, and that makes him a "serial abuser"? The Democrats more and more show themselves for the feckless fools they are. Having lost the election for President, having lost more seats in the Senate and House, they have consigned themselves to throwing pies (literally and figuratively).

Frank Gaffney has the perfect solution for what the President should do in response to these Democratic character assassination: recess appointment, and luckily a Senate recess is coming up in a few days.

Consequently, President Bush should serve notice on the Senate: Complete whatever further investigations now indicated and vote the Bolton nomination in the Foreign Relations Committee and on the floor of the Senate before the upcoming May recess. Or face a recess appointment of Bolton that will enable him to get to work at the United Nations while senators are engaging in constituent services and other important matters outside of Washington.

Perhaps President Bush can make this bitter pill less difficult for committee Democrats to swallow. The president could offer to provide anger-management classes to senators who might be infuriated by their inability further to defame so estimable a public servant as John Bolton and to prevent him from advancing at the U.N. the president's policies - policies that are, in the end, their real reason for their efforts to deny him this post.

I doubt the President will do this. But at this point the only way to fight Democratic intransigence is by descending to their level and declaring all-out war on them.