Digby introduced the FDL Book Salon with Glenn Greenwald this afternoon, and naturally the topic of impeachment came up.
As usual in these things, comments were made along the lines that impeachment wasn’t an option because there was no way to get Republicans senators on board: “To think that a significant number of gooper senators would vote to kick out a gooper president is beyone fantasy. Aint a gonna happen.”
The Democratically-controlled House Judiciary committee started formal consideration of impeachment in February 1974, by discussing what types of offenses impeachment covered and what grounds might exist to impeach President Nixon. In May, the committee began to hold impeachment hearings.
This is an excerpt out of TIME from mid-July 1974 after two months of Judiciary committee hearings, and about three weeks before Nixon resigned:
Impeachment Vote. The impeachment question may preoccupy the House for most of the summer, but the Democratic leadership believes that, barring some dramatic turn in favor of the President, the outcome is virtually decided. After an informal member-by-member analysis, the Democrats concluded that the House is now disposed to vote for impeachment by a margin of at least 55 votes. The lineup, according to the Democratic count: 245 (including 210 Democrats and 35 Republicans) for impeachment; 190 (38 Democrats and 152 Republicans) against. “That’s our minimum figure,” declares a ranking Democrat, insisting that the leaders counted only the sure votes for impeachment.
The survey indicates that the House will probably vote to impeach Nixon by more than a narrow margin. On the other hand, it suggests that the vote may not be spectacular enough to move the Senate to convict the President by the necessary two-thirds majority and thereby remove him from office. In any event, the mood in both chambers of Congress will be greatly influenced by the historic decision now facing the Supreme Court.