Several senators pointed to the cynicism of the Republican Party's approach to such nominations. As Leahy observed, Ashcroft himself had declared, in opposing the nomination of Bill Lann Lee to be assistant attorney general for civil rights, that Lee was well qualified but should not be confirmed because of his liberal political views. Now Ashcroft and other Republicans were insisting that it was illegitimate to make Ashcroft's extreme-right political views an issue. Schumer asked how an attorney general who has characterized legal abortion as the mass murder of children could enforce federal laws protecting abortion clinics. Again and again he declared that he would vigorously enforce laws which he abominates, on civil rights, abortion rights, gay rights, etc.
Slavery is abhorrent.
It is a remarkable commentary on the rightward shift in American bourgeois politics, and especially in the Republican Party, that the nominee for attorney general of the United States should find it necessary to make such an assertion.