Political Amnesia Overtakes GOP

Gary Paul Gates Diagnoses Republican Illness

(CBS)  There now are clear signs that political amnesia, always an occupational hazard in Washington, is once again setting in on the Capitol like ice on a pond.

All through the summer and early fall Republican leaders in Congress pushed the case for impeaching President Clinton with the zeal of moral crusaders engaged in a holy war.

They were so convinced of their righteousness that they even managed to persuade themselves that they had public opinion on their side, in spite of the evidence, in poll after poll, that a majority of Americans had no stomach for going ahead with the impeachment process.

Those polls don't mean a thing, they argued. The only poll that counts is the one in November, and the voters will let Bill Clinton know what they think of him and his "sex, lies and videotape" in the midterm elections.

And so they did - though hardly in the way the Republican strategists had anticipated. Nor anyone else, for that matter.

The unexpected Democratic gains in House seats flew in the face of all the pre-election forecasts, and for the stunned Republicans, the results were a harsh reality check. And, as they assessed the damage, they wasted no time in unleashing their frustration on the man who had led them into this latest political battle - House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

The pressure that was quickly brought to bear on Gingrich to step down as Speaker was driven, in large part, by the fact that more than anyone else, he was responsible for shaping the GOP campaign around the impeachment issue. Which, as it turned out, was a serious misreading of the public mood.

In the sober aftermath of the election, most surviving Republican leaders all but conceded that barring startling new evidence of wrongdoing on Clinton's part, impeachment appeared to be dead in the water. Some even went so far as to suggest that impeachment by the House would have no political legitimacy unless it had solid bipartisan support - and, given the circumstances, there was no chance of that.

Such was the temper of House Republicans in those first few days after the November election - but what a difference a month makes. Now, as we move into mid-December, close observers of Capitol Hill believe there is a 50-50 chance that the House will impeach Clinton on at least one article of impeachment.

So what happened?

First, no one should have been surprised that the House Judiciary Committee would vote to extend the impeachment battle into the larger arena of the House floor.

Even back in November, when the political markers were pointing in the other direction, the hard-line Republican majority on the committee was firmly committed to impeachment, while their Democratic counterparts were just as firmly opposed to it.

This was all too predictablon a committee where the prevailing ethos, in recent years, has been one of snarling partisanship.

What was not expected was the subtle and gradual shift toward a pro-impeachment stance by various moderate Republicans. This was the group that was supposed to provide enough votes to keep the impeachment hounds at bay and join Democrats in the push for censure or some other more lenient form of punishment.

Some have argued that the White House has only itself to blame for the recent shift in momentum, and there is no doubt that many Republicans - as well as some Democrats - were irritated by the arrogant, cavalier way the president responded to the 81 questions posed by the Judiciary Committee.

But the overly precise legalisms he resorted to in those answers were no more hair-splitting than was his testimony before the grand jury in August. And when videotape of that testimony was broadcast to the nation, public resistance to impeachment notably strengthened, as was so plainly evident in the November elections.

Nor, since then, have been any fresh bombshells or "smoking guns" to rekindle the flames of impeachment. In fact, when the special prosecutor, Ken Starr, testified before the committee, he merely reiterated the allegations that already had been made public, and, indeed, he exonerated Clinton on Whitewater and other investigations that had cast a shadow over his presidency.

And if, to be deemed legitimate, the case for impeachment requires strong bipartisan support, there is little hope for that, either. Only a handful of Democrats have indicated they intend to abandon the president, which means that if the House does vote for impeachment, it will do so along strict partisan lines.

Finally, there are the public opinion polls, which Republicans had dismissed with such scorn in the months leading up to the midterm elections. The latest surveys reveal that there has been no significant change since November.

While the majority of Americans deplore Clinton's sexual trysts with Monica Lewinsky and his subsequent lies about the affair - and even find such behavior repugnant - they continue to believe the president's transgressions do not constitute crimes that rise to the level of impeachment.

In short, nothing has really changed since the electorate delivered its verdict in November. And if enough Republicans have succumbed to political amnesia to bring about Clinton's impeachment in the House, then they better hope the voters are afflicted with a similar loss of memory the next time they go to the polls.