Well it’s not every day you get to see an American president get impeached, but here we are. Donald Trump has been impeached with just a week left to go in his one term in the White House for inciting an armed mob of deplorables to attack the Congress on January 6. As the House moved to impeach Trump today, one thing that I was curious to see was just how many House Republicans would break with Trump and vote to impeach him? After Trump incited a riot that seriously endangered their own lives, how many of those Republicans would finally stand up and say “Enough is enough!” to our soon-to-be former president?
Well it turns out it there was 10 of them — specifically these 10 people:
As underwhelming as that might seem, that is actually quite a remarkable result given the history of past presidential impeachments in this country. Compared to the three other times a president was impeached by the House, that is the highest number of members of Congress who have ever voted to impeach a president in their own political party.
(If you’re curious, no Republicans voted to impeach Donald Trump in 2019, 5 Democrats voted to impeach Bill Clinton in 1998, and no Democrats voted to impeach Andrew Johnson in 1868.)
That historical perspective got me thinking though: 1998 may have been 23 years ago but there are still currently sitting House members who were around back in the days when President Clinton was going though his own sex scandal. That means that there are current House members who are on the record casting votes on three of the four presidential impeachments in our country’s history and some of those House members are Republicans. Just how many House Republicans thought it was appropriate to impeach Bill Clinton for lying about having an extramarital affair but thought that Donald Trump’s actions on January 6 were not an impeachable offense? Just how many craven hypocrites were there who would stand by a self-admitted sexual predator trying to overturn an election result? I decided to find out.
I started by pulling a list of all sitting House members listed by order of seniority and eliminated everyone who was first sworn in in 1999 or later. I then tallied their votes in the three votes on impeachment that they participated in: Bill Clinton in 1998, Donald Trump in 2019, and Donald Trump in 2021. The full results can be found here:
Now, the first thing that stands out to me is this: There are many more long-serving Democrats from back then than Republicans. Of these long-timers, 35 of them are Democrats compared to 11 Republicans. The other thing that stood out to me was just how much these impeachment votes adhered to party lines. Almost all of these members voted with their party in all three of these votes which shouldn’t be too surprising.
I also found exactly what I was looking for. Here is your list of nine House Republicans who voted to both impeach Bill Clinton over a blowjob and voted against impeaching Donald Trump over inciting an armed insurrection against Congress:
It should go without saying that those nine men all deserve to be named and shamed for their records on impeachment votes.
I did find something interesting that I did not expect though: There were two Republican members who voted to impeach Bill Clinton but did NOT vote Nay on impeaching Donald Trump yesterday. The first of these reps is Texas rep Kay Granger who was one of four Republicans did not vote in yesterday’s final impeachment vote. I tried to find a publicly stated reason why she made such a decision but none has been provided as of yet. She was apparently still isolating herself after testing positive for COVID-19 last week which is fair enough, but neither her nor her staff has not been willing to comment to the media on how she would have voted had she been present at the House yesterday. That right there shows a real special kind of cowardice.
The other Republican member to not back Trump was Fred Upton of Michigan. To his credit, he gave a pretty clear explanation on Twitter defending his impeachment vote on Twitter, and I have to say that there isn’t a whole lot I disagree with in there:
Before you feel the temptation to start lavishing this guy with praise for voting to impeach Trump, lets remember that he also made the decision to not to impeach Trump the first time around. So this guy’s voting record suggests this:
- Lying under oath about a blowjob = impeachable offense.
- Attempting to extort another country into embarrassing your political opponents = not an impeachable offense.
- Sending a mob of deplorables to riot in the Capitol = impeachable offense.
I suppose that’s better than the standards of the other Republicans who voted in all three impeachments but frankly that’s a very low bar. Yesterday’s vote does make him the only person in American history to vote in favor of impeaching two different presidents. If nothing else that will make for an interesting trivia question one day.
