WASHINGTON — The Senate was poised to confirm John Ashcroft to be President Bush's attorney general, ending the most vitriolic Cabinet struggle since the nomination of another former senator, John Tower, was rebuffed in 1989.
Divided largely along party lines, senators engaged in the final hours of debate on the most controversial of Bush's Cabinet picks, and the Senate was expected to approve him later Thursday. The selection of Ashcroft, a former Republican senator from Missouri, has pitted liberals against conservatives inside and outside the chamber.
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., became the latest Democrat to announce his opposition to Ashcroft, whom he said he has known for 40 years.
Lieberman, who as Democratic vice presidential nominee last year spoke frequently of his religious beliefs, denied conservatives' charges that Democrats' opposition has been sparked by Ashcroft's outspoken commitment to his own Christian views.
"On issues ranging from civil rights to privacy rights, Senator Ashcroft has repeatedly taken positions considerably outside the mainstream of American thinking," said Lieberman, adding later, "It is Senator Ashcroft's record, not his religion, we should judge today."
Senate Majority Whip Don Nickles, R-Okla., said he was "bothered by the intensity of opposition" to Ashcroft.
"I have absolute, total, complete confidence that he is going to be one outstanding attorney general of the United States," Nickles said. "He's as qualified as anybody probably has ever been to be attorney general."
Ashcroft's confirmation would fill the Cabinet within 12 days of Bush's taking office. By contrast, it took President Clinton more than a month longer, until March 11, 1993, to confirm his final Cabinet member, Janet Reno, as attorney general.
Despite the near-certainty of Ashcroft's confirmation, Democrats labored to muster enough "no" votes to show Bush that Democrats could put up strong opposition to any potential Supreme Court nominee who shared Ashcroft's conservative views on abortion and states' rights.
The strongest statement would be 41 of the 50 Democrats, Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said Wednesday, because that number would sustain a filibuster, a delaying tactic that can kill nominations but which Democrats declined to use in Ashcroft's case. However, Daschle acknowledged, "Frankly, we are not there yet."
Frustrating the task were a half-dozen Democrats who endorsed Ashcroft's nomination, including Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd, who declared his intention in less-than-glowing terms late Wednesday.
While there is evidence Ashcroft "can be a healer," Dodd said, "I remain concerned that he will, as he appears to have done at times in the past, submit to the temptation to divide Americans along racial lines."
Still, Dodd and others said Ashcroft deserved the benefit of the doubt in the debate over whether he would keep his promise to enforce the law.
"I take him at his word," said West Virginia Democratic Sen. Robert C. Byrd. "I have no cause to doubt Senator Ashcroft's word or his sincerity regarding his fealty to an oath he will swear before God Almighty."
Twenty-six Democrats have announced their firm opposition to Ashcroft. Still uncommitted was the woman who succeeded Ashcroft in the Senate, Missouri's Jean Carnahan. Her husband, the late Gov. Mel Carnahan, defeated Ashcroft posthumously after dying in a plane crash during their bitterly fought campaign.
Ashcroft's chief defender, Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch of Utah, repeatedly asked senators to give their former colleague the benefit of the doubt.
"You have worked with him and know him to be a man of his word," Hatch said. "He is not the man unfairly painted as an extremist by the left-wing activists who have reportedly threatened senators in their re-election bids if they vote for his confirmation."