Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich penned a piece for Fox News in which he said that Thursday’s House impeachment proceedings vote was a “strategic defeat for Nancy Pelosi.”
The Halloween vote for impeachment was an enormous strategic defeat for Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
She admitted seven months ago, in a March 6 interview with The Washington Post, that a purely partisan impeachment vote was wrong and dangerous. She was right. Here are her own words:
“I’m not for impeachment. This is news. I haven’t said this to any press person before. But since you asked, and I’ve been thinking about this, impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path because it divides the country. And he’s just not worth it.”Measured by that standard, the Thursday vote was a terrible failure. The House voted in an entirely partisan manner except for two Democrats who split to vote no with the Republicans.Months of leaks, secret investigations, news media hysteria, and a parade of witnesses failed to move a single Republican to vote yes.The so-called whistleblower has decayed into a potential liability so much the Democrats are now talking about never bringing him to testify.Senate Republicans have been so turned off by the House Democrats that Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, one of President Trump’s more outspoken Republican members, has called their effort “a partisan clown show.”
Gingrich further argues “that there is an overwhelming belief among Republicans and many independents that this effort is a coup d’etat, which is a sore losers’ effort rather than an impeachment based on the merits.”
He also makes the case that the partisan nature of the vote underscores that belief.
The contrast with the last impeachment vote is striking. In 1998, 31 Democrats voted with the Republicans to create a bipartisan 257-176 majority for moving forward with impeachment.By contrast not only did no Republicans vote for the Pelosi impeachment, but she also lost two Democrats despite enormous pressure within the caucus.The American people understand the difference between a fair and an unfair process. As Ron Faucheux reported in the October 32 Lunchtime Politics, there is an Economist/YouGov poll (October 27-29) which reported that 49 percent of Americans thought the Clinton impeachment proceedings were fair. Only 25 percent thought they were unfair and 27 percent weren’t sure.. . . . Measured against her own standard, the vote on Halloween was a terrible defeat which is likely to haunt the House Democrats through the 2020 election.That vote will cost a lot of Democrats their seats next year. When combined with the radicalism of the national Democratic candidates for president, and the continued economic growth under President Trump’s policies, it is likely that Thursday’s vote guaranteed this would be a one-term Democratic majority, and we will be hearing from Speaker Kevin McCarthy in 2021.
Watch him discuss the House vote before it took place on Halloween.
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