Posted on 09/05/2006 2:59:49 PM PDT by WmShirerAdmirer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House said on Tuesday Democrats were trying to turn Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld into "a bogeyman" two months before U.S. congressional elections, and it dismissed their calls for his ouster.
Congressional Democrats, striving to grab control of the House and Senate from President George W. Bush's Republican Party in November's congressional elections, are pushing for a vote of no confidence in the 74-year-old Rumsfeld, one of the longest-serving U.S. defence secretaries.
"The president strongly supports the defence secretary. It's not going to happen," White House spokesman Tony Snow told reporters, referring to Democratic calls to dump Rumsfeld.
"Creating Donald Rumsfeld as a bogeyman may make for good politics but would make for a very lousy strategy at this time," Snow said.
Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada said he hoped for a vote on Rumsfeld either Wednesday or Thursday as part of the debate over a defence appropriations bill. But Senate Republicans could use procedural measures to block a no-confidence resolution on Rumsfeld.
Senate Majority leader Bill Frist of Tennessee dismissed the resolution as "political gamesmanship."
"If they want to inject a purely partisan political resolution, I will address it. Until they do so, I'm not going to sit here and hypothesise how I will have to deal with it," Frist told reporters.
Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the No. 2 Democrat in the House of Representatives, said it was uncertain when or how Democrats would bring up the measure in the House, which has rules that give the Republican majority party more power to block votes.
Democrats stepped up their criticism of Rumsfeld after his speech last week assailing critics of U.S. war policies.
Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said, "We're not going to get involved in politics here at the Defence Department," and repeated White House characterisations of Democrats' criticism as "baseless partisan attacks."
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