Democrats Plan to Rough-up, but not Stop Gonzales?

An article in Monday's NYT appears to lay out the left's plan for the Gonzales nomination. According to the author:

Even some of Mr. Gonzales's detractors say they do not expect to prevent him from becoming the nation's 80th attorney general, as well as the first Hispanic holder of the office. Instead, they say, they hope to lay down a record that will make it difficult for him to be confirmed to the Supreme
Court.

The article also has this nugget:

His critics, both on the committee and among witnesses testifying after Mr. Gonzales's own appearance on Thursday, will portray him as a lawyer who made colossal misjudgments in supervising the administration's legal strategy for dealing with Al Qaeda and other terrorist threats.

Are Democrats really willing to bash the first Hispanic nominee for Attorney General on behalf of mistreated Al Qaeda and other terrorists? Well, maybe. Note that there are few Democrat officeholders or policymakers quoted in this article as proponents of this strategy. The only such Democrats mentioned in the article are Senator Schumer, who predicts that Gonzalez will be confirmed with "broad Democratic support," and Senator Leahy, who has reportedly complained about the administration's unwillingness to disclose the extent of Gonzales's participation in the White House's terror memoranda. The rest of the article is based, apparently, on a letter to be released on Monday by Adm. John D. Hutson and "several military legal experts."

We will have to see if Democrats are willing to sign on to a "Be kind to terrorists" tact in an admittedly futile attempt to derail the first Hispanic Attorney General. My guess is that this strategy will have its most fervent support on the editorial pages of the NYT and the fax machines of some left-wing groups. Democrats, I assume, still have enough political judgment to know that this strategy will appeal to their base on the left and the press, but not to majority of Americans.

Drudge is also reporting that Democrats are considering using Abu Ghraib abuse footage at the Gonzales nomination hearings. This will require a lot of nuance, even for Democrats. It will be difficult to avoid the image of a party that is willing to score political points by taking the side of terrorists (even abused terrorist).