Salmon: Senate Republicans like 'lunatics' running asylum

Human Events, Feb 12, 1999 by Gizzi, John

Conservatives Can't Understand Impeachment Trial Concessions

One Republican senator, who wishes to remain anonymous, says Senate staff "errors" and backroom concessions by Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R.-Miss. account for a series of rules passed during the Senate impeachment trial that effectively blocked the House impeachment managers from calling the full list of witnesses the managers believed they needed to make their case in the Senate.

But Rep. Matt Salmon (R.-Ariz.), who did not wish to remain anonymous, said that watching Senate Republicans run the trial was like watching "lunatics run the asylum."

One rule provided that all witnesses requested by the House would be voted for in a bloc, another gave Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D.-S.D.) veto power over any additional witnesses that would be deposed after the initial list was approved.

Because of the first rule, Senate Republicans limited the House managers to just three witnesses and excluded Betty Currie as one of those witnesses. Because of the second rule, it was a foregone conclusion that no additional witnesses-and certainly not President Clinton-would ever be called, regardless of what the initial witnesses said in their depositions.

One Republican senator told HUMAN EvENTs that Lott "made it clear to us last week that there was an original error in [Senate] Resolution 16 [the initial procedure for the Clinton impeachment trial] that could have meant an up-ordown vote by the Senate on the entire list of witnesses."

Just a Bureaucratic Snafu?

The senator attributed the "error" to staff. "If they had put, say, 12 to 15 witnesses on such a list, getting 51 votes for approval would have been a big gamble," the senator said. "So, we essentially said, `How many witnesses can be approved?' and Trent made the concession that resulted in language that gave approval power [for additional witnesses] to both leaders."

Because only one Senate Democrat-Russ Feingold of Wisconsin-voted for deposing any witnesses at all, it is unclear what concession Lott got in return for giving Daschle veto power over future witnesses.

Liberal Republican Sen. Jim Jeffords (Vt.) frankly admitted to HUMAN EVENT, "I favored calling no more than three witnesses and I was a part of that coming about." But it was unclear how many other Republicans might have defected had Lott pushed for more witnesses, or retained in Republican possession the majority's right to run the Senate trial without giving a veto to the minority.

Lott admitted he had made the concession, but didn't explain why or what he got in return. "It was a concession," he told Congressional Quarterly. "But there were a lot of concessions on both sides as we went back and forth."

"It's problematic:" Rep. Bob Barr (R.-Ga.), one of the 13 House impeachment managers, told HUMAN EVENTS. "The senators may not like this process, but that is the law. It would be better if they had communicated with [the managers] and said something like `how can you help us make an intelligent decision' instead of trying to make these `collegial' decisions."

"I wouldn't use the term `disappointed,' but I would have preferred putting on as close to a real trial as possible," added Rep. Steve Chabot (R.-Ohio), another manager. "The Senate is a very different institution than the House"

But Rep. Salmon didn't pulled any punches. "When I learned of this concession, I thought of the old adage about letting the lunatics run the asylum," he told HUMAN EVENTS. "Instead of making concessions to a partisan flak like Daschle, the Republican senators should rewatch The Wizard of Oz and take special note of the part where the Cowardly Lion says, 'C-c-courage."