Republicans Shift Gears in Drive to Oust Clinton

Faced with a public skeptical of removing President Clinton from office, even some of his staunchest Republican critics spent weeks trying to downplay the significance of a vote to impeach him.

From Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.) to impeachment pointmen such as Reps. Charles T. Canady and Bill McCollum, both from Florida, GOP legislators stressed the same mantra: Only the Senate could actually remove Clinton. Like a grand jury, the House was merely passing along accusations.

But now that the House appears virtually certain to approve at least one article of impeachment later this week, Hyde and other key Republicans are dramatically raising the stakes by amplifying calls on Clinton to resign if the House votes against him.

To Clinton’s besieged defenders, this change in tone looks like classic bait and switch--Republicans first try to lull the country into complacency about impeachment, then use the searing fact of it to ignite a chain reaction that they hope will drive Clinton from office.

But the GOP’s shifting emphasis also shows how one of the president’s core arguments might be rapidly turned against him: If the House votes to impeach, his insistence that the country needs to move on might generate calls not only for the Senate to coalesce quickly around censure but competing demands for Clinton to end the crisis by stepping down.

That prospect obviously increases the risk to Clinton in the impeachment vote but also raises the stakes for the remaining wavering lawmakers who may have comforted themselves--and their voters--by assuming that the Senate would quickly wrap up the controversy without serious risk that Clinton would be forced out.

“If he is impeached, you are in a new situation and people readjust their sense of what is appropriate,” said GOP strategist Bill Kristol, publisher of the Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine. “I am not convinced that, if he is impeached, everyone will say: ‘Let’s end this right away. Let’s cut a deal.’ ”

All of this represents a marked change in tone for the GOP from the period leading into last week’s Judiciary Committee vote. Earlier in December, for instance, McCollum argued on ABC-TV’s “This Week” that impeachment was merely the “ultimate scarlet letter” and would not require the Senate to conduct a trial.

During last week’s votes, other Republicans also struck calming notes. “Impeachment is not removal,” insisted Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr.(R-Wis.).

Those soothing words reflected a harsh political reality: Polls have consistently found little support for removing Clinton from office. In a Pew Research Center survey released Monday, 67% of Americans said that Clinton should not be impeached and removed.

But as support for impeaching Clinton has solidified inside the House Republican Caucus, the calls for his resignation that were largely muted through the fall campaign and the initial Judiciary Committee deliberations suddenly have resurfaced. Hyde himself signaled the pivot on Sunday when, for the first time, he called on Clinton to step down “to save the country a lot of turmoil and tumult,” if the House votes to impeach.

House Majority Whip Tom DeLay and House Majority Leader Dick Armey, both of Texas, echoed Hyde’s words Sunday. On Tuesday, after announcing that he would vote for impeachment, Rep. Tom Campbell (R-San Jose) jumped on the pile, saying: “It would save the country immense turmoil if [Clinton] would resign.”

Many GOP and conservative operatives believe that, if impeachment passes the House, these voices are likely to be joined by a swelling procession of Republicans.

“Hyde broke the barrier,” said Marshall Wittmann, director of congressional relations for the conservative Heritage Foundation. “I think you’ll have a chorus of calls from the Republican side for resignation to spare the country [a Senate trial], and you may have opinion leaders saying that as well and even some in the Democratic Party.”

This change in direction has both angered and worried White House officials. “One of the ways [Republicans] have sought to build support for impeaching the president, is by suggesting . . . that it will be some kind of super-censure and nothing more, that no one should worry, that [Clinton] will continue serving the country,” said one senior White House aide. “Then they turn around and say that’s the reason to remove him.”

In an interview Tuesday, McCollum dismissed those complaints. “I don’t think there is any effort to lull the country to sleep,” he said. It remains a fact, he said, that a House vote to impeach wouldn’t mean “anything formal” in terms of forcing Clinton’s removal.

Still, some Republicans are concerned that the party may be compounding its political risks, if it raises its goal from tarring Clinton with an impeachment vote to actually mounting a serious effort to force him from office, either through resignation or a Senate conviction.

“Once the House has finished impeachment it is imperative that Republicans move on with the people’s business” rather than trying to pressure Clinton to resign, said Ken Johnson, the communications director for Rep. W. J. “Billy” Tauzin (R-La.), who still has not announced how he will vote on impeachment. “The president needs to be punished for his transgressions, but we have to be careful that we don’t wind up going down the tubes with him.”

As House Republicans unify behind impeachment, however, it is clear that many in the party feel increased confidence about pushing on further and escalating the pressure to terminate Clinton’s presidency.

Most Democrats have assumed that, even if Clinton is impeached, the overwhelming public distaste for the struggle would compel the Senate to make a quick deal for censure that would keep Clinton in office--as 1996 GOP presidential nominee Bob Dole suggested Tuesday.

But now, pressure is growing in the GOP for the Senate to conduct a full-scale trial. On Tuesday, for instance, McCollum said that he “absolutely” would encourage the Senate to take the case to trial rather than reach an early deal on censure.

In part, the conservative demand for a trial is fueled by hopes that extending the crisis will increase pressure on Clinton to step down. “Republicans feel more comfortable now in the resignation mode,” said Wittmann. “There’s a general feeling that regardless of the general polls about whether [the president] should be impeached, there is a wave of revulsion from the public about this whole crisis and, if it can end with Clinton’s resignation, so be it.”

Immediately bolstering that belief in the GOP was the result of a striking ABC/Washington Post poll released Monday night. Though more than three-fifths of respondents continued to oppose impeachment, 58% said that, if Clinton is impeached, they would prefer he resign rather than fight on in the Senate.

But other analysts--such as Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press--were deeply skeptical of that result. Kohut noted that other surveys have revealed no increase in support for resignation and even the Post poll found that only 13% of Americans believe the country would be better off if Congress removes Clinton.

With public reaction to a Senate trial so unpredictable, maybe the only indisputable conclusion is that forcing the crisis to that stage would greatly increase the risks for both sides--raising the prospect of a backlash that might either force Clinton to resign or decimate Republicans at the polls in 2000.