Bill’s Bills of Impeachment

Vic challenges my latest posting?

“I don’t remember that any of the articles of impeachment were for Clinton cheating on his wife. However, perhaps you know what Grams’ motivations were for voting for those articles.”

Vic’s right. The bills of impeachment were for perjury and obstruction of justice. I wrote so a few posts ago. The infidelity was, however, what the Republicans seized on in their attack on Bill Clinton’s “slickness.” Their most loyal constituency could hang on the legitimate if questionable perjury and obstruction of justice claims as a high crimes and misdemeanors after Ken Starr worked overtime to prove Clinton’s many sexual improprieties. Clinton lied no question, but the Republicans in Congress were absolutely politically tone deaf to the majority of Americans because they viewed Clinton as a political threat.

Why a political threat? Because Clinton shrewdly read the American public’s desire for centrist policies, many borrowed from the Republican party. Tom Delay and company calculated that to stamp out the Democrats they needed to rid the Democrats of a politically appealing centrist. Sure enough since Clinton’s departure the Democrats have shifted to the left and thus their chances of winning back Congress are badly compromised.

So, Clinton was impeached because his centrism threatened the future of the Republicans. The delicious irony was the discovery of a dozen Republican Congressman who voted for the impeachment who also had hidden sexual escapades of their own. No, they hadn’t lied about it under oath after a multimillion dollar investigation by a partisan federal prosecutor but pushed into a corner who knows whether they too might have emulated “slick” Willie?

Maybe Rod Grams isn’t a prig. Maybe. But tsk tsking the current Republican leadership in Congress for their “backbiting” strikes me as gross political hypocrisy.