Beltway types think they smell blood at DOJ. Granted, a normal president would have fired an attorney general as bad as Abu Gonzalez — especially in light of his role in the prosecutor purge last December. But whether Pres. Bush will fire his long-favored courtier has become a matter requiring intense speculation by bewigged millionaire pundits in the Capitol, when they are not speculating about the 2008 presidential campaign.

Six years into the Bush era, and despite daily evidence of the president’s rank incompetence at management and governance, the Old Media types still can’t believe he is as bad as his critics say he is. The Old Guard still clings hopefully to the notion that George W. Bush is “resolute” and that “he values loyalty,” while the record shows very clearly that he is simply a self-absorbed, dim-witted and stubborn aristocrat.

Why wouldn’t this president fire Gonzalez? He gave in to criticism on the two most controversial appointments of his presidency: Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the failed nomination of his secretary, Harriet Miers, to the Supreme Court. He screwed up in both cases — waiting to fire Rumsfeld until after the 2006 elections, when it was too late to help his party; and letting Miers, his “Miss Jane Hathaway,” twist in the wind agonizingly for days while his troglodyte base became increasingly lathered over her lack of ideologoical purity.

So, assuming Bush will fire Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, who would he nominate as a replacement? (If you just thought, “his dog, Barney” — get out of my head!) One obvious candidate is his brother Jeb, the former governor of Florida, who has been out of office for over two months, and is undoubtedly tanned and well-rested.

There is a famous precedent, of course. Pres. John F. Kennedy appointed his younger brother, Robert Kennedy, as AG. Yes, Bobby earned a law degree from the University of Virginia in 1951, whereas Jeb’s 1973 Bachelor degree from the University of Texas was in Latin American Studies. But really the main qualification George Bush demands from his attorney general, as both John Ashcroft and, especially, Gonzalez have proved, is a keen ability to keep his lips in near proximity to the president’s buttocks.

Could Jeb’s nomination muster the 60 votes it would require to pass in the Senate? It seems unlikely but if you look at every other important issue that the Senate has voted on since the Dems took their one-vote majority, the approval of Jeb’s nomination is as likely as not.