Ok history buffs - when Nixon was impeached, how did the process start?

[jillan]

After the Watergate scandal was exposed, then what?

Who started it? How did they get the support that they needed?

Details, please!

IT'S TIME FOR HISTORY TO REPEAT ITSELF.

[Kenroy]

1. Nixon was not impeached

he resigned before articles of impeachment were presented.

[MrScorpio]

2. There was a vote in the House Watergate Committee to impeach

The vote was 27 to 11 to impeach

Judiciary Committee Approves Article to Impeach President Nixon, 27 to 11
6 Republicans Join Democrats to Pass Obstruction Charge

By Richard Lyons and William Chapman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, July 28, 1974; Page A01

The House Judiciary Committee took the momentous step last night of recommending that the president of the United States be impeached and removed from office.

The first such impeachment recommendation in more than a century, it charges President Nixon with unlawful activities that formed a "course of conduct or plan" to obstruct the investigation of the Watergate break-in and to cover up other unlawful activities.

The vote was 27 to 11, with 6 of the committee's 17 Republicans joining all 21 Democrats in voting to send the article to the House.

At least one other article accusing the President of abuse of power is expected to be approved Monday when the committee resumes.

But approval of a single article is all that is required to send the issue to the House. And approval of a single article by a majority of the House is enough to impeach the President and send the case to trial in the Senate, which could remove Mr. Nixon from office by a two-thirds vote.

The bipartisan support for the article adopted last night makes impeachment by the House seem more than likely. The majority included three conservative Southern Democrats and three conservative Republicans.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/watergate/articles/072874-1.htm

[jillan]

5. Why don't we send out mass emailings of that article to every senator

and House member in Congress.

Do you think that maybe they would get a clue?

[blondeatlast]

26. It was a different time. The RNC didn't threaten to cut re-election fundin

and other support for those Rs who might vote FOR impeachment.

Nowadays, that's all that matters.

[Toots]

19. Still a majority of Republicans felt he did nothing wrong or deserving of

Impeachment. Back then there were a few Republicans that put their country before their Party. That is not the case now. Republicans feel their Party is their country and Democrats are the actual enemy. I mean true actual enemy of America. The uneducated and unbalanced have gained control of America and the results are everywhere. The world is cringing.

[Kenroy]

29. Yes, I know

that doesn't contradict what I wrote: Nixon was not impeached.

[jillan]

3. I did know that, but how did it get to that point?

Not that bushiter would have the intellegence to resign!

[Zen Democrat]

6. Impeachment was voted out of the Judiciary Committee.

Nixon resigned before the full vote of the House. About two days after the smoking gun tape was released. It was released because he lost his last appeal by unanimous vote of the Supreme Court and time had run out. The smoking gun (or at least one of them) was released showing that he was down with paying hush money to the burglars -- he said that he knew where he could get his hands on a million dollars. Earlier he had stated that when he made that comment he had followed it with ... "but that would be wrong." However, when the tape was released there was no such caveat about it being wrong. He just made that crap up thinking that he wouldn't really have to release the tapes. He wanted to release "edited" versions. When it finally came out ... Hello! slam dunk obstruction of justice.

He resigned when Barry Goldwater paid him a little visit and told him that the vote to impeach in the House was a foregone conclusion, and that he would only get two or three votes tops in the Senate. Nixon threw in the towel.

After all these years, the question remains ... why did the country allow Ford to pardon him, and allow Jaworski to let him off the hook as an "unindicted co-conspirator." He was, in fact, a crook.

[deadparrot]

4. IIRC, it was more than Watergate...

Didn't the Pentagon Papers come out about that time, too?

Of course, they also had a pissed-off Democratic congress. That helped.

[Zen Democrat]

12. The Pentagon Papers came out in 1970.

The Pentagon Papers indicted the Johnson Administration and exposed the lies that got us into the war in the first place. Nixon fought the release of the Pentagon Papers because he didn't want anything to blemish the righteousness of the war that HE was waging, and escalating, in Vietnam and Cambodia.

[NYC]

7. Obstruction of justice.

"Small time" crooks broke into Democratic office in the Watergate. One of the burglars had E. Howard Hunt, WH, in his phone book.

The burglars were getting money for keeping quiet, going to jail, they wanted their families supported.

As the trails led to the White House, John Dean started talking, didn't want to be part of the cover up. Then the demand for Nixon tapes. Nixon supplied partial transcripts, then more complete transcripts, then some tapes, on and on.

Nixon was an unnamed indicted co-conspirator. His resignation did not come easily. He had one set of lawyers telling him to stick it out, and another pair telling him to resign, that he must resign.

Congress and the court did not get the same information at the same time. When Congress did get enough information, it was pretty obvious that Nixon was obstructing justice. Some Republicans begged him to resign.

Anyway, he finally did. To say he wasn't impeached is true, but he would have been impeached and convicted if he didn't resign.

Edit: Nixon was constantly polling the House and Senate to see which way the wind was blowing. He knew they would impeach.

[knowbody0]

8. as i recall

demonstrations were relentless, the press started "getting it" about vietnam, his approval rating sunk to under 25%, the word "impeachment" was in the air, there was no way out of the watergate scandal, and he resigned. it was absolutely orgasmic watching him leave the whitehouse on a helicopter.
history is repeating itself in many ways. the guys in the military cannot feel ok about their commander in chief's performance with Katrina. it is all unraveling for him and it ain't pretty.

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. many of the guys in teh active duty

military have had it

[Garbo 2004]

9. Watergate hearings. Bush resigned to avoid impeachment.

(Edited to note, Nixon resigned, of course. Wishful thinking must have taken over the keyboard. LOL)

Watergate hearings were televised on networks and people watched. Other more politically oriented material is available of course, but here's some general info from Museum of Broadcast Communications site: http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/W/htmlW/watergate/watergate.htm

[NYC]

11. Read your subject line.

Wishful thinking?

[jillan]

13. lol! Fruedian slip?? Best post of the day? nt

[Garbo 2004]

15. LOL....oops. n/t

[Garbo 2004]

14. LOLOLOL! I didn't catch that!! Yeah, I wish...n/t

[beyurslf]

16. It doesn't take a history buff to say Nixon wasn't impeached

[sam sarrha]

17. actually Nixon resigned to prevent an IRS investigation of slush funds

[EC]

18. It was when Agnew was caught

on tax evasion. Of course it was more than that, but it could be proven, so Agnew stepped down, about a year before Nixon.On the same day he stepped down, Agnew copped a "no contest" plea to charges of tax evasion, which basically means admitting you have done nothing wrong except that you're pretty sure you would get convicted by a jury of your peers. (The tax evasion charge always cracks me up, whether it's Al Capone or Spiro Agnew. I mean, would they have been just fine if they'd itemized their criminal incomes?)

Agnew was fined a measly $10,000, sentenced to three years probation and disbarred. A later civil suit ordered him to make nearly $300,000 restitution to the state of Maryland.


There were bribery charges also

[Gyre]

20. It may be time for "history to repeat itself"

but I can say with great certainty that it's not going to happen the same way. A morally-bankrupt republican majority in congress guarantees that (not to mention a morally-bankrupt democratic party with the exception of a few vocal outliers ).

Gyre

[jillan]

22. I really like your sig line ! n/t

[TankLV]

21. First: Get the DEMOCRATS back in control of congress.

Then it's all easier from there.

Withou step one, nothing else matters.

[blondeatlast]

28. Impeachment has no chance of being introduced until

then, much less brought to a vote.

[alcibiades_mystery]

23. Read "Watergate: The Presidential Scandal That Shook America"

by Keith W. Olson, University of Kansas Press.

Olson makes a well-supported argument that it was the small, conservative newspapers that led to Nixon's resignation. That is to say, opinion was more or less divided according to the model that we see today: conservatives staunchly in support of the Nixon administration, even as the facts about the burglary and cover-up started coming out, and liberals playing the same old Nixon-hating tune (as we do re: Bush). However, through a series of political blunders (the Saturday Night Massacre, the fight for the tapes), the small-town/ small-city or heartland newspapers began to turn against Nixon; these were the conservative papers that the Nixon people often relied on and positioned against the "liberal elite" big city papers. As the editorial boards of these small papers bgean to turn against Nixon, his position became more and more untenable.

The conservatives learned a lesson from this, just as they learned a lesson from Vietnam. The Gulf War and current day manipulation of the press with respect to combat operations was the lesson learned from Vietnam: A population with full information about a war usually makes the right decision - the war in Vietnam was obviously flawed from the outset, and the nearly full access given to the press during its prosecution convinced many Americans that it was so. Similarly, the political apparatus understood that press desent could bring down an administration, so the conservative movement began to build up its own press apparatus to cheerlead no matter what: Fox News is of course the paradigm of the reactionary press apparatus, and it will not turn on Bush like the small newspapers turned on Nixon. The monumental project of constructing the conservative radio talk networks grew out of the same danger of democracy: democracy must be message managed to avoid progressive outbreaks. The conservatives learned both these lessons during the 60's-70's, and they bore fruit fairly quickly (Reagan's ridiculous escape from the criminal conspiracy of Iran-Contra was the first major victory, and Bush's continued immunity from catastrophe after catastrophe is shaping up as the most difficult struggle for these formidable, entrenched institutions). The question that a book like Olson's forces us to ask: Has the conservative movement constructed a perfect shield for all levels of governmental criminality and incompetence?

The quasi- religious fanaticism with which people let Bush off the hook for nearly everything points to yes. Bush is god-like and immune to critique from the right; he's been constructed into a semi-divine emperor figure in the classic mode of fascist political investment. And the papers ain't gonna save us this time. Why? The small papers during Watergate insisted, at the end of the day, on the rule of reason. Today the conservative press apparatus traffics in pure affect, the oscillating play of fear and desire, resentment and excitement - it has no content (just read FreeRepublic for five minutes); it is pure form and intensity. As such, it doesn't matter what Bush actually does, so long as he serves as a mirror for the affects which the conservative press apparatus circulates. You can't fight this with reason, as Kerry tried to do. This is why Kerry came off as boring, dull, uninvested, and why Gore seemed like a deadman in 2000. You can only fight it by circulating opposing affects, and by modulating intensities. And that's the business we should be at now (Howard Dean's angry-man would have been a much better foil to Bush than Kerry's exalted man of reason). The age of reason is over. Rush Limbaugh teaches us that much. It is now time for a war of affects (disgust and pity overtaking triumphalism and viciousness in Iraq, for example).

[ProudDad]

24. Not only that

but the "small town" papers barely exist any more.

The small dailies have been bought up by large corporations who set the editorial line.

[ProudDad]

25. That history CANNOT repeat itself.

It required a press that was willing to investigate and print the truth about the Watergate conspiracy. It required a Congress willing to rationally and completely investigate the conspiracy. It took an idiotic, megolomaniacal president who loved the sound of his own voice on tape to provide the "smoking gun" for the Watergate committee.

Now, there's a completely bought and sold captive (capitalist) press that doesn NO investigative reporting ... just stenography. There's an idiologue, repuke Congress. There's a clever bunch of handlers who aren't going to allow any smoking guns to come out of the WH.

BUT...

Get a Dem House in '06 and House Judiciary CHAIRMAN JOHN CONYERS will be happy to hold a number of hearings in '07 exploring the question of the impeachment of Goerge W. (shrub) bush for High Crimes and Misdemeanors. How'd you like to see those hearings!?!

[blondeatlast]

27. Public opinion was against Nixon, too. Far less blind faith than

exists today.

It wasn't political suicide to vote FOR impeachment for Rs. That is no longer the case unless W brings the party down with him and with PNAC calling the shots (and their hostile takeover of the Republican Party) it ain't gonna happen, no matter how much we all want it.

[leftofthedial]

30. george hw bushturd and the proto-neocons engineered

a palace coup

there is no similar group of repukes today. Over the last few decades and especially since the coup of 2000, they have all been eliminated or marginalized.

There is no power to even speak out against the neocons, much less bring them down.

They may choose to sacrifice the bushturd, but I doubt it.

[hyphenate]

31. Nixon resigned

before he could ever be impeached. You can bet anything that the idiots and schemers in the wh now would never even have THAT amount of ethics.