For Democrats Challenging Bush, Ashcroft Is Exhibit A

[villager]

For Democrats Challenging Bush, Ashcroft Is Exhibit A

By ADAM NAGOURNEY


WASHINGTON, July 12 — From Iowa to New Hampshire to South Carolina, the Democratic candidates for president these days are scrambling for issues: denouncing President Bush's tax cuts, bemoaning his deficit, decrying the chaos in Iraq. And all too often, those issues bring restrained applause from their crowds.

But there is one subject that has proved to be a surefire tonic for members of the somewhat dispirited party, and it is not the man they are trying to oust from the Oval Office.

"In my first five seconds as president, I would fire John Ashcroft as attorney general," Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri said the other day, bringing cheers from Hispanic leaders in Phoenix.

"We can not allow people like John Ashcroft to take away our rights and our freedoms," Senator John Edwards of North Carolina declared in a sweltering library in Concord, N.H., on Monday, drawing a nearly instantaneous standing ovation.

Or, as Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts put it in a speech on domestic security in Lowell, Mass., last month: "When I am president of the United States, there will be no John Ashcroft trampling on the Bill of Rights."

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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/13/politics/13ASHC.html?ex=1058673600&en=c0b220ca2160bddc&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE