RE: Will impeachment hurt the Republican Party?
Backuptrk, I don't want to be a wet blanket here, but I personally don't expect the GOP to "fade away." And the impeachment process may not hurt it as much as some of you folks seem to think. It's a long way from here to 2000, and all kinds of things may happen in the interim -- including, perhaps, the End of Civilization As We Know It (Y2K disaster). <gg>
Here is a Dec. 14 NY Times article that touches on the subject (in case you missed it):
Many in G.O.P. See No Fallout for 2000 Vote
By RICHARD L. BERKE
WASHINGTON -- Prominent Republicans, some of whom complained that their leaders badly mishandled the White House scandal all year long, now say the party's march toward impeachment would cause no lasting political damage.
Republican governors, state party leaders and strategists around the country said in interviews that the stakes were far lower than they were in the fall because there were no looming elections.
Dismissing polls showing that the public overwhelmingly does not want President Clinton impeached, many Republicans argue that Americans have short attention spans and will be utterly uninterested in rehashing the impeachment debate when presidential and congressional elections take place in two years.
"If the election were a week from now, this probably wouldn't be a plus for Republicans," said retiring Gov. Jim Edgar of Illinois. "But if you look at the year 2000, I don't believe what
happens in the House Judiciary Committee or the House or the Senate is going to have as much impact as the speculation is today."
Such newfound confidence among Republicans -- which others in the party warn could be the political version of whistling past the graveyard -- is all the more remarkable because most ascribed their dispiriting election results last month to the party's perceived preoccupation with the scandal. But the lack of greater concern about political fallout helps explain why many of the party's lawmakers have plunged ahead with the inquiry.
Insisting that impeachment would be far from voters' minds by the year 2000, former Sen. Alan Simpson, a Wyoming Republican who heads the Institute of Politics at Harvard University, said: "The attention span of Americans is, 'Which movie is coming out next month?' and whether the quarterly report on their stock will change."
Gov. Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania, who had chastised congressional Republicans for not pressing other issues during the campaign, is nevertheless skeptical that the scandal would again backfire.
"I hear people predicting a rash of Republican upsets if the Republicans vote for impeachment, that they would lose the majority of the House of Representatives in the year 2000," Ridge said. "I don't necessarily share that view."
Roger Stone, a Republican strategist who was an adviser to Richard Nixon, said the former president enjoyed respectable job approval ratings "the day they threw him out." So, Stone added, "it's a mistake to judge the long-term effects of public opinion in a maelstrom of the storm because they'll shift again over time."
Noting early polls showing that Gov. George W. Bush of Texas would defeat Vice President Al Gore for president in 2000, Stone said, "If this were such a problem, if there were a generic negative in being a Republican, why does George Bush continue to lead Al Gore?"
The unexpected calmness of many Republicans is based on their assumption -- right or wrong -- that if the House voted to impeach Clinton, the Senate would not carry it out and the president
would not ultimately be ousted from office.
Several Republicans also argue that Clinton's sustained high job-approval ratings do not tell the full story. They contend there is little good will toward the president in either party and that
Americans would come to understand that Republicans were only fulfilling their obligation in taking up impeachment.
Yet other Republicans fear that the complacency in the party could be dangerous: They warn that if there was a protracted trial in the Senate, the matter could backfire and Republicans could be portrayed as fixated on destroying Clinton to the exclusion of the pressing issues facing the nation.
They could also be accused of caving to the party's right wing. A poll last week conducted by The Wall Street Journal found that the Republican Party had slipped to its lowest level of popularity since the early 1990s.
Former Sen. Warren Rudman of New Hampshire, for one, predicted that if Clinton was impeached and convicted by the Senate, Republicans would lose control of the House and Senate in 2000.
There are plenty of examples of politicians' or parties' being haunted by actions of years past. For example, shortly after he took office in 1974, President Ford pardoned Nixon. Many voters never forgave Ford, and he lost to Jimmy Carter two years later.
"The fact that they're trying to get it all done before the end of the year is probably a wise move that gives them a couple years to be very engaged in policy issues," said former Rep. Mickey
Edwards, an Oklahoma Republican who now teaches at Harvard University. But Edwards warned that there could be enduring political damage if some party leaders persisted with brazen talk of ousting the president and if Republicans "continue to be perceived as very partisan."
Some moderate Republicans, particularly in the Northeast, have also been outspoken in urging House Republicans not to impeach the president. They have warned that the inquiry could haunt the party just as it did in November. Gov. George Pataki of New York is planning to begin traveling the country to promote alternatives to what he said were the party's failed strategies this year.
Most influential Republicans concede that they do not expect the party to benefit from the inquiry. That is why the Republican National Committee has gone out of its way to keep a low profile and not be identified with the inquiry.
But while several of the Republicans interviewed said they expected that the party would suffer short-term damage from the inquiry, most expressed confidence that it would not be lasting.
Ed Gillespie, a strategist who is close to several leading House Republicans, offered this assessment: "We're better off as a party with the short-term damage that will result from moving
forward out of principle than with the long-term damage that would result from quitting out of political calculation. When we have a front-runner and a standard-bearer, the party will be cast in that person's image, not in the Judiciary Committee's image."
Several other Republicans agreed that they could now risk looking even worse if they did not act, and would particularly alienate the party's conservative base. Speaking with a sense of
resignation, some Republicans said they had come to believe that if anything, the party would be viewed as failing to fulfill its obligations if it did not pursue the impeachment inquiry.
"Unlike in the Watergate years, the principle of honesty and integrity in government is now a Republican issue," said John McLaughlin, a Republican pollster. "If they surrender it, they're
surrendering an important principle that will discourage their base of support."
Despite the Republicans' poor performance in the November elections, McLaughlin said, Republicans should take heart because the outcome underscored how political dynamics could shift quickly and unexpectedly.
"What the last election proved is that voters have really short memories," McLaughlin said, adding that there might have been a Republican landslide had the election taken place in August, after Clinton admitted that he had misled the public about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
Henry McMaster, chairman of the Republican Party in South Carolina, was particularly blunt, saying: "Any Republican who doesn't vote for impeachment is going to have a lot of explaining to do. There would be a serious backlash."
Mayor Stephen Goldsmith of Indianapolis said that with the elections so far off, it was critical for the party not to be lulled into thinking it did not have to develop new issues.
"The party, either way, can survive on the impeachment issue," Goldsmith said, "if it has some other agenda that affects the quality of peoples' lives."
Most Republicans agree that that the best thing for the party is to move the impeachment inquiry with as much dispatch as possible. But even if the inquiry continued month after month, Rusty Paul, chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, said he was unconvinced that the matter would hurt Republicans much more than Democrats.
"If it drags on for another year or so," Paul said, "people will say, 'A pox on both of your houses."'
Republican after Republican discounted the long-term impact of the inquiry, and said only the most panicked partisans should be worried.
"What I would watch is the passage of time," said Rich Bond, a former Republican Party chairman. "There's room for swings in public opinion to come to our favor."
Dwight Sutherland, a Republican national committeeman from Kansas, said the lines had already been drawn and that voters in two years would not very likely be swayed on either side over how the impeachment matter was carried out.
"There is danger," Sutherland said. "We're going to be pilloried by the networks and respectable print journalists. But the alternative, which is selling your soul, is so much worse."
nytimes.com
The latest Washington Post/ABC poll also provides some insight into this matter, although it is contradictory. On the one hand, for example, respondents give, by a very slight edge, a positive assessment of the performance of the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee, but a negative assessment, by a very large edge, of the Republicans' performance. Yet a majority also said that the hearings were "fair" to the President. (This suggests that a majority either did not listen to the hearings at all, or paid them minimum attention.)
There is another question, asking what respondents' reaction would be if the President were be removed: 1) pleased, 2) satisfied (but not pleased), 3) dissatisfied (but not angry), 4) angry. There were more "angry" than "pleased," but "dissatisfied but not angry" was the largest category.
All the questions on the poll are broken down by sex/race/region/party/age/education. Interestingly enough, when you look at the results by age, the most pro-Clinton group, by far, is the over 60 group, followed by the 18-30 group. So much for the myth of the Clinton generation! The biggest split is by race -- and note, that over 55% of blacks say they will be "angry" if Clinton is removed.
What the poll most depressingly reveals, to my mind, is the split by party. There is a HUGE difference on ALL questions between Republicans and Democrats (with Independents in the middle, but closer to the Dems). In fact, I recommend that the poll be looked at ONLY in terms of the respondents' political affiliation because that gives you a better idea of what is going on under the surface...And that is the existence of a much larger ideological divide than I personally can ever remember existing.
Check it out:
washingtonpost.com
BTW, this is the same poll according to which 60% of the respondents would prefer the President, if impeached, to resign than to defend his case before the Senate.
jbe
|
