Friday, May 12, 2017

Bill Clinton's Impeachment

As we learned, Bill Clinton was impeached as a result of his affair with Monica Lewinsky. What's most interesting to me is that this did not get past the senate, so even though he was impeached, he maintained his position as president. This means that even though the house declared him guilty, the senate declared him not guilty. This strikes me as odd because both houses of congress consisted of primarily republicans, so if they were trying to take advantage of the scandal to rid of Clinton as president, they could have freely done so. Why do you think his impeachment did not get past the senate?

3 comments:

  1. His impeachment was not past by the senate possibly because some republicans where not on the same page. They looked at the scandal probably realizing that it did not effect a large number of the people. In the end the president was trying to protect himself. But what he did was wrong. I don't really understand either.

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  3. The Republican Party had 55 members in the Senate: a majority, but not the 67 needed to pass a two-thirds vote to remove Clinton from office. Even though only 50 and 45 Republicans voted to remove Clinton from office for the perjury and obstruction of justice charges, no member of the Democratic Party voted guilty on either charge.

    What is often neglected is the second perjury charge and the charge of abuse of power that did not pass in the House. Independent prosecutors determined there was significant evidence for Clinton to be impeached, bringing four charges to be considered by the House of Representative, of which two passed.

    Adopting a Red-Blue mentality, the simple fact is that the Republican-majority Senate could not have freely removed Clinton from office because the Democrats controlled eleven seats more than the thirty-four needed to fend off any motion of removal by a united Republican Party.

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