On January 15 we honored the birthday of Martin Luther King whose leadership led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Since his death, the Stonewall Uprising of 1969 ultimately led the Supreme Court to recognize the right of same-sex marriage. The Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade in 1973 finally recognized a woman’s right to control her own body and therefore her own future in society. The ideal of equal rights has defined the United States since its conception in 1776, but the struggle for every American citizen to gain those rights has been a long, tough slog. Sadly, the Trumpistas (MAGA Republicans) in their Orwellian belief that some people are more equal than others are organizing on the national, state, and local levels to undo many of those hard-fought-for democratic human-rights gains.
In 1994 Newt Gingrich led the extreme New Right to victory and became the first Republican Speaker of the House in 40 years. In the final weeks of the campaign, he introduced his Contract with America and claimed the party’s victory was a mandate for its passage. President Bill Clinton – I think accurately – called it a “contract on America.” Wisely, Gingrich omitted religious and controversial anti-democracy issues he thought would cost his party votes: prayer in public schools and opposition to abortion. However, that put him at odds with the rising True Believers, an even more extreme wing that was challenging the New Right.
The contract did include other anti-democracy proposals: amendments to require a balanced federal budget and to set term limits for members of Congress. The former was intended to prevent any future New Deals, New Frontiers, Great Societies, or efforts to provide universal healthcare. It also would help to prevent prompt responses to such things as infrastructure needs, climate change, natural disasters, and the recent pandemic. The latter would prevent voters from voting for representatives that they wanted to keep because they approved of the jobs they had been doing. Fortunately, neither passed.
The True Believers also thought it would be fun to impeach Clinton for any so-called scandal they could fabricate. They investigated anything and everything, but Gingrich knew there was nothing there and was able to hold his radicals at bay until after the next elections in 1996. Clinton was re-elected, and Gingrich kept his majority in the House. However, the True Believers gained seats and pressured Gingrich to reluctantly support impeachment.
The True Believers were intent on providing a clear example of tit for tat: They never forgave Democrats for holding hearings on Richard Nixon’s involvement in Watergate and Ronald Reagan’s knowledge or lack thereof of the Iran-Contra Affair. Ironically, Democrats agonized over impeaching Nixon for the crimes he committed, even though the only other president to be impeached, Andrew Johnson, had been brought to trial only for political reasons – but Nixon’s crimes were real. Also, ironically, Democrats had no intention of impeaching Reagan because it was generally accepted that he was guilty only of sloth – not being on the job and not understanding what his people were doing even though he signed the authorization for the crimes. Clinton was considered a nobody from Arkansas who was not entitled to be president. It would be fun to impeach him just for revenge.
The Republican-controlled Congress had given attorney Kenneth Starr the unique task of finding some reason to impeach Clinton. In a five-year search, nothing in the issues he investigated showed wrongdoing until Starr found out that Bill had cheated on Hillary. He then contrived a hearing to entrap him by getting him to lie about it under oath. It was diabolical, but it worked. Clinton’s private relationship with Monica Lowensky never threatened the constitutional system of the United States and certainly wasn’t worthy of an impeachment and trial. Even five courageous Republican senators broke with their party to vote not guilty. To lie under oath certainly deserved a congressional censure, but they didn’t have enough sense to do that.
In spite of how bad the impeachment made them look, the Republicans amazingly kept control of the House in the 1998 elections. Nevertheless, they lost so many seats that Gingrich realized he had to go: His New Right had become dominated by True Believers, whom he considered to be “cannibals” – and there was no way he could lead them. He had driven Robert Michel from his 14-year leadership of the Republican minority. Now, it was he being driven away by those even more anti-democracy and anti-government than he. He resigned from the House after four years as speaker.
Dennis Hastert of the 14th district of Illinois replaced him as speaker, and he implemented an extremely anti-democracy policy known as the Hastert Rule: He would only allow the House to vote on a bill if a majority of House Republicans supported it. That meant that if 100% of the Democrats but fewer than 50% of the Republicans wanted a bill to pass, it would not come up for a vote. This disenfranchised the will of a huge majority of American voters. Regrettably, he served as speaker longer than any other Republican (1999-2007).
Since then, Republican speakers have met the same fate as Gingrich. John Boehner (nearly 5 years), Paul Ryan (a little more than 3), and Kevin McCarthy (less than a year) all found it impossible to do their jobs at governing and satisfying the right-wing extremists within their own party. Boehner even announced his resignation singing Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah – it was a wonderful day for him.
Meanwhile, Trump was impeached twice: Once for extortion and a second time for fomenting a bloody coup against the republic. Although presented with overwhelming evidence, loyal Trumpistas in the Senate voted to save him each time. And today’s Republican House, which can’t even produce a budget – their primary reason for existing – is spending its time trying to find a reason to impeach Joe Biden. Tit for tat? Déjà vu.
A version of this essay was printed in south Arkansas’s El Dorado News-Times on January 21, 2024.
High Noon 
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