House Appears Ready to Approve Impeachment

Although the strike on Iraq delayed debate on impeaching President Clinton, it appeared Wednesday that enough House members now intend to vote against Clinton that his efforts to seek lesser punishment would prove futile.

The decision by House Republican leaders to postpone the impeachment debate, originally scheduled to begin today, until as early as Friday or Saturday could give Clinton an unexpected reprieve. But many lawmakers said it would probably just delay inevitable passage of at least one of the four articles of impeachment he faces.

So many previously uncommitted Republicans announced their support for impeachment on Wednesday that the lawmakers said the question is no longer whether the House will impeach Clinton but by how wide a margin.

“It’s too late in the House” for Clinton to turn the tide, said Rep. John Edward Porter (R-Ill.), an erstwhile impeachment opponent who reversed himself Wednesday and announced he will vote against Clinton.

Even the president’s supporters were dubious that a delay could change the anti-Clinton dynamic--either by the successful execution of the military action against Iraq or other unanticipated developments.

“Any delay breaks the momentum toward impeachment,” said Jim Jordan, spokesman for Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee. “But it is not clear that the president can reverse it.”

Strike Doesn’t Slow Announcements

The anticipation that built during the day about the strikes did not deter a steady stream of Republicans from going public with their support for impeachment. Their pronouncements drained the pool of potential opponents of impeachment so seriously that it seemed mathematically impossible for Clinton to win the votes he needs in the GOP-controlled House.

Among the first to climb down from the fence Wednesday was Rep. Brian P. Bilbray (R-San Diego), who ended weeks of agonizing by announcing he will support impeachment because he believes Clinton perjured himself in his sworn testimony about his affair with Monica S. Lewinsky.

“There is no way I can, as a father, a man and a husband, explain how the president was telling the truth,” Bilbray said at a news conference he conducted in San Diego shortly before boarding a plane for Washington.

Similar announcements came from GOP moderates who had been central to Clinton’s strategy for thwarting impeachment, including Reps. Sherwood L. Boehlert of New York, one of the House’s most liberal Republicans; James A. Leach of Iowa; W.J. “Billy” Tauzin of Louisiana, a former Democrat; and Porter, who had been a vocal opponent of impeachment just a few weeks ago.

“I get the impression that the president considers himself above the law,” Porter said, in explaining his switch.

Tauzin said: “I’ve come to this conclusion, frankly, with a lot of sadness. . . . I once was an original supporter of Bill Clinton. I endorsed him in his first [presidential] campaign. . . . Now I’ve had to put those personal feelings behind me.”

The day’s news was not entirely bad for Clinton. Rep. Christopher John, a conservative Democrat from Louisiana, said he will oppose impeachment, dashing Republican hopes that he might cross party lines. And Rep. Jay C. Kim (R-Diamond Bar) told the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin in Ontario that he is leaning toward opposing impeachment.

Kim, defeated in his district’s GOP primary earlier this year following his conviction for violating campaign finance laws, could not be reached for comment Wednesday. But according to the Bulletin, he expressed concern that a Senate trial of Clinton “is going to be an international embarrassment.”

Clinton had been scheduled Wednesday to meet at the White House with one of the few remaining undecided Republican moderates, Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut, but the meeting was put off because of the strike against Iraq. Shays, once an impeachment opponent, has been reconsidering his position and Tuesday night conducted a raucous town hall meeting in his district to hear public opinion.

Clinton did meet Wednesday for about 50 minutes with Rep. Amo Houghton of New York, a GOP moderate who has come out against impeachment. The two men discussed possible alternative punishments, such as censure; a White House spokesman would only say that the meeting was “constructive.”

‘They Don’t Like the Way He Does Business’

As the tide continued to turn against the White House, administration officials questioned the reasoning of many of the Republican moderates who have been declaring their intentions to vote for impeachment.

White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said a close reading of the comments by these lawmakers shows “that they view this vote as some sort of mechanism to punish the president because they don’t like him, and they don’t like the way he does business.”

Said Lockhart: “There’s clearly nothing here that reaches a historical standard of impeachment.”

Once the impeachment debate begins, House Democrats plan several parliamentary moves they hope will slow the process and perhaps inflame public opinion against the Republican-led drive.

Normally, only an hour of floor debate is allowed for a “privileged resolution,” such as the articles of impeachment. The House GOP leadership, however, has signaled it will seek the “unanimous consent” of lawmakers to prolong the debate, perhaps to six or eight hours.

Gephardt Asks for 36 Hours of Debate

But on Wednesday, House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) asked Speaker-elect Bob Livingston (R-La.) to allow 36 hours of debate, which works out to almost precisely five minutes for each of the House’s 435 lawmakers--the same amount of time allotted to the debate before the Persian Gulf War.

Rep. David Dreier (R-San Dimas) said late Wednesday that the latest Republican plan is to allow 18 hours of debate over two days, with the proceedings running around the clock.

At some point in the debate, Gephardt also may exercise his prerogative as the Democratic leader to introduce his own “privileged resolution,” probably containing some censure resolution. House GOP leaders have said they will not allow a vote on censure, but Democrats are likely to force a procedural vote that they will portray as tantamount to a vote on whether that is a preferable alternative to impeachment.

Democrats may also repeatedly demand time-consuming roll-call votes to adjourn.

Times staff writers Marc Lacey, Richard A. Serrano and Faye Fiore contributed to this story.