Last week conservative New York Times columnist Bret Stephens tried to draw parallels between the 1999 impeachment of President Bill Clinton and the almost-certain upcoming impeachment of President Donald Trump. The problem is, of course, that the two situations are as different as night and day — conservatives complain that the Democrats are trying to overturn the 2016 presidental election when they themselves tried to overturn the 1992 and 1996 elections.
Understanding the difference, and there actually is one, between the modus operandi of the conservatives who tried to get rid of Clinton for getting elected in the first place and the “liberals” who merely want the stain of a Trump presidency removed is paramount here.
One action about which people would like to forget, if they ever knew, was that in July 1992 conservative activists took the unprecedented step of filing suit in Federal court in Little Rock, Ark. to force Clinton off the ballot. Three years later the original “right-wing conspiracy” surrounding the late right-wing Pittsburgh financier Richard Mellon Scaife’s financial support of media, including his own Tribune-Review, engaging in the smear campaign was exposed by CBS's “60 Minutes,” in the Times and on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. And the night that Clinton was reelected anti-tax activist Grover Norquist vowed to have Clinton taken out.
Nothing like that has ever happened against Trump on the political left or in the Democratic Party, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. Indeed, only recently has Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi even raised the specter of impeachment; in her heart she probably wanted to do so as much as anyone but was smart to wait until as much evidence as possible was gathered. And now that more of Trump’s malfeasance is being exposed, to say nothing of his ignorance and incompetence, a larger percentage of Americans is coming around.
As things stand now, it’s unlikely that the Senate would remove Trump — after all, the Republican Party still controls it and voters would revolt if GOP-affiliated senators voted to find him guilty (to be fair, impeachment is more of a political rather than legal process). But this isn’t tit-for-tat in that, since you tried to remove our guy, we’ll try to remove yours. The “left” isn’t anywhere near as bloodthirsty as the right; if anything, the “left” is reacting to the bloodthirstiness of the right — you can take bullying for only so long before you begin to react. That’s what we’re seeing now.
Understanding the difference, and there actually is one, between the modus operandi of the conservatives who tried to get rid of Clinton for getting elected in the first place and the “liberals” who merely want the stain of a Trump presidency removed is paramount here.
One action about which people would like to forget, if they ever knew, was that in July 1992 conservative activists took the unprecedented step of filing suit in Federal court in Little Rock, Ark. to force Clinton off the ballot. Three years later the original “right-wing conspiracy” surrounding the late right-wing Pittsburgh financier Richard Mellon Scaife’s financial support of media, including his own Tribune-Review, engaging in the smear campaign was exposed by CBS's “60 Minutes,” in the Times and on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. And the night that Clinton was reelected anti-tax activist Grover Norquist vowed to have Clinton taken out.
Nothing like that has ever happened against Trump on the political left or in the Democratic Party, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. Indeed, only recently has Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi even raised the specter of impeachment; in her heart she probably wanted to do so as much as anyone but was smart to wait until as much evidence as possible was gathered. And now that more of Trump’s malfeasance is being exposed, to say nothing of his ignorance and incompetence, a larger percentage of Americans is coming around.
As things stand now, it’s unlikely that the Senate would remove Trump — after all, the Republican Party still controls it and voters would revolt if GOP-affiliated senators voted to find him guilty (to be fair, impeachment is more of a political rather than legal process). But this isn’t tit-for-tat in that, since you tried to remove our guy, we’ll try to remove yours. The “left” isn’t anywhere near as bloodthirsty as the right; if anything, the “left” is reacting to the bloodthirstiness of the right — you can take bullying for only so long before you begin to react. That’s what we’re seeing now.
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