Conservatives Temper Their Glee at Vote

Bill Clinton’s conservative adversaries, who long have acknowledged their intent to cut short his political life, sensed vindication Saturday. But they kept cool about it.

“I’m not angry, I’m not happy, I’m not feeling much but sadness,” said Grover Norquist, a conservative star who returned calls Saturday from the office of lame-duck Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). “Clinton is like the guy who kept filing frivolous appeals and then 10 years later he’s finally executed but it’s been so long you can’t even remember who he killed.”

Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, comes out of a conservative populist movement that has been agitating against the president’s agenda since the day Clinton was elected. It may be debatable whether these right-leaning forces rise--or descend, depending on your view--to the level of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” cited by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton almost a year ago. But it is clear that Clinton is indelibly wounded, in no small part because of this phalanx of foes.

“This is a victory,” said Craig Shirley, a GOP media consultant. “We were proven right, but more importantly, the constitutional process was proven to work. And I’m happy that Republicans had the courage, against all sorts of organized opposition and public disapproval, to stick to their principles.”

The argument that most of Clinton’s troubles stem from a conspiracy of his enemies was made by the president and his supporters before he came to Washington. But the extent of the conservatives’ power to work against him became a reality once he moved to the nation’s capital.

The people in the conservative movement are of various levels of intense ideological commitment, ranging from those who are uncompromising in political deal-making to the most inside of Washington insiders. With the help of talk radio, their communication network reaches all over America.

One of the core groups is the Heritage Foundation, a leading conservative think tank in Washington that in 24 years has grown to a staff of 180 and a budget of $28 million. It has become an energetic supplier of public relations for conservative ideas.

“Conservatives believe [impeachment] is a just duty of a Congress given the actions of this president,” said Marshall Wittmann, a Heritage official.

But any feelings of “victory” for the conservative agenda Saturday, Wittmann said, would be inappropriate. “I think it would be wrong to score this as a basketball or baseball game. We feel justice is prevailing because, for conservatives, what Clinton did in the Oval Office was the desecration of an institution, the presidency.”

Keith Appell, a conservative strategist, said that many in his camp believe they had Clinton’s number even before he was elected.

“Read Rush Limbaugh’s radio transcripts in 1991,” says Appell. “He was saying then, ‘The guy’s a phony. The guy’s a fraud. He’s slick.’ And now that has all been made manifest in this ugly scene that Bill Clinton has brought upon himself and the country, because he can’t find it in himself to look into the eyes of the American people . . . and simply tell the stinking truth.”

Certainly Clinton’s election gave focus to a broad political conservative culture across the country. Conservative breakfast groups and social clubs cropped up all over. Conservative lawyer1931476993united, and conservative publishing houses, such as Regnery, found lifeblood in authors eager to publish their right-of-center views, particularly their views of Clinton.

Early in the Clinton administration, Norquist formed a coalition of conservative groups pushing against each and every Clinton policy. On Wednesday mornings, Norquist brought together people representing about 15 of those groups. Squeezed into his tiny office in Dupont Circle, the groups ranged from Republican Party leaders to more fringe activists eager to slow Clinton forces on all fronts. Now there are 80 members of the breakfast group and they met as recently as last week.

“Oddly enough, no one even mentioned impeachment,” said Norquist. “We had too many other issues to discuss.”

The defeat of the Democrats in the House in 1994 was seen as a triumph of conservative policies. The impeachment is seen as a victory of cultural ideas.

“With Bill Clinton, he likes to take his pain in installments,” said Randy Tate of the Christian Coalition, which, in 1994, put $1 million into lobbying for the “contract with America,” the House GOP campaign manifesto in 1994.

“Today, Clinton was held accountable for his personal behavior, lying under oath and obstructing justice,” Tate said. “This effort on our part is little to do with public policy--like school choice and tax cuts. This is about the rule of law and a message it sends to our kids about telling the truth.”

Sara Devito Hardman, who founded the California chapter of the Christian Coalition in 1991, said Saturday she has never gotten over being “astounded” by stories of Clinton’s sexual adventures and how he avoided the draft during the Vietnam War when she heard them from Arkansas attorney Cliff Jackson, a Clinton friend-turned-political nemesis.

“I couldn’t believe he got elected with such a reputation,” she said. “That has come home to roost.”