By Jonah Goldberg
latimes.com
June 13, 2017
The 1998 midterm election was a debacle for Republicans, particularly then-Speaker Newt Gingrich. Since Reconstruction, no president had seen his party gain seats in the House in a midterm election six years into his presidency. Gingrich, who made the election a referendum on impeaching President Clinton, resigned after the loss. Clearly the voters had sent the signal, “Don’t do it.”
The White House thought it had dodged a bullet. But one morning, over Thanksgiving break, then-White House Chief of Staff John Podesta was running in Washington’s Rock Creek Park when it hit him: GOP leaders are “not going to let their members off the hook. They’re going to beat and beat and beat on them until they vote for impeachment.”