The power of the base, especially its Christian Right component, explained what many people found so puzzling about the actions of the House Republicans in Clinton’s case: that they pursued impeachment in the face of overwhelming opposition to it in the national polls. They were far more concerned about the view if the base than about national polls. The donors couldn’t be offended. Turnout by the Christian Right was crucial to the party’s fortunes in elections, in particular to its ability to hold control of the House.
Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee were immune to arguments from other Republicans, a few of them in the House itself, that what they were about to do would hurt the party, and that the removal of a popular President wouldn’t be good for the country. A makor Republican figure I know, a man with excellent conservative credentials, trolled among the committee Republicans in December [1998], trying to persuade them that, though he probably agreed with them that Clinton’s behavior constituted impeachable offenses, they should use their prosecutorial discretion and decide that impeaching Clinton and trying to remove him from office was in neither the country’s, nor the Republican Party’s, interest. He failed utterly.
Referring to the committee’s considerations, which included an entire day on the subject of perjury. I said to this person, “They’re hearing perjury, perjury, perjury.”
He replied, “They’re hearing primary, primary, primary.”
