WASHINGTON -- Even as the House Judiciary Committee moves to expand its impeachment inquiry, a growing number of conservatives are coming to terms with what they increasingly see as the painful and galling reality that President Clinton will keep his job.
"I don't know of anyone who still thinks he'll be removed from office," said the conservative writer Arianna Huffington. She said attempts by congressional Republicans to shift the focus to a perjury charge and Clinton's campaign finances would probably not change anything. "It's too late," Huffington said.That does not mean the pressure on Republicans in Congress to forge ahead with impeachment proceedings has eased. On the contrary, there is enormous pressure to proceed as aggressively as possible, both for the political purpose of satisfying the party's conservative base and out of the philosophical belief that fighting on, even to almost certain defeat, is the right thing to do.
But while virtually no one on the right believes Clinton should remain in office, most conservatives have quietly, grudgingly given up any real hope that he will be ousted. At this point, the revised goal of many conservatives is simply to lose with honor.
Bill Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, said his magazine would certainly continue pressing Congress to impeach the president -- but then he mocked the improbability of his own position. "Some of us are hanging tough in our obdurate blindness to the political reality," Kristol said, with a grim laugh. "I'm like one of these Japanese soldiers after World War II. It's 1949 and I'm on some island not knowing the war is over."
But already, he is focused less on the outcome of the fight than the integrity of the process, and he seems most concerned that Republicans fulfill what he sees as the conservative duty to uphold the rule of law and the Constitution. "The thing I want more than anything is a real debate, real consideration of whether he should be impeached," Kristol said. "The Congress owes the American people that, even if they don't know they're owed that. Even if Clinton slips the noose, I think it's important that conservatives not accede to Clintonism as victorious. You can't re-litigate Clinton, but you can continue the conversation while looking beyond it."
Kristol said there is a split between conservatives who want to go through the motions of impeachment as quickly as possible and those who intend to fight to the last, no matter the consequences.
But even some in that latter group seem a little weary. William Bennett, author of "The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals" (Free Press), sounded uncharacteristically humbled by the mystery of how it is that most Americans remain relatively undisturbed by Clinton's transgressions.
"I may have been wrong," in thinking that the public would eventually react, or would hold future presidential candidates to a higher moral standard as a result of the Clinton scandals, said Bennett, who was nursing a bad cold and sounded downright dejected.
"I'm not sure enough people care," he said. "For the first time in my adult life, I'm not in sync. I don't get it. What about all these conferences I've been invited to? I mean, values, schmalues. I don't get it."
Bennett says he still believes there is a 50-50 chance that the president will be impeached in the House but trailed off mid-sentence without bothering to finish answering a question about what might then happen in the Senate.
In Congress, the debate is, if anything, still heating up. But the Republican strategist Ralph Reed said he and others were already focusing on the aftermath of the inevitable failure of congressional Republicans to remove Clinton from office. "They have to make it clear that this was a reluctant duty, kind of like settling the estate of a deceased parent," Reed said. "You do it, move on and you're fine. You don't look like you're enjoying it."
Huffington said she and many other conservatives felt forced to concede defeat after the special prosecutor Kenneth W. Starr "not only failed to connect the dots of presidential abuses but removed two of the major dots, Travelgate and Filegate."
She was speaking of the dismissal of White House travel office employees and the improper gathering of FBI files of government officials in the White House.
She said she hoped that Clinton would be tried for perjury after his term expired.
Wait. Is there anyone on the right who still believes Clinton might be removed from office? "No," Reed said without any hesitation. "Not to my knowledge. We're starting to focus our energy and efforts where it belongs and that's with Al Gore."
There is not, of course, universal agreement among conservatives, particularly the rank and file, on this point. G. Gordon Liddy, for example, says listeners to his radio show seemed almost ready to give up but got mad all over again after Clinton responded to questions posed by the House Judiciary Committee in terms they saw as legalistic hair-splitting.
But throughout the conservative movement there are indications that many have nonetheless begun to look beyond the current efforts to impeach Clinton.
A banner headline in a recent issue of the conservative newspaper Human Events was "Think President" but the text didn't concern Clinton at all; It referred to the 2000 elections. "The next two years will determine whether the conservative movement returns victorious to the pinnacle of power or is once again sent into the wilderness." the front-page editorial said. "Everything rides on the outcome of the 2000 presidential elections."
The editor of Human Events, Terence Jeffrey, insisted that good conservatives would never give up on impeaching a president who in their view has repeatedly flouted the rule of law. But Jeffrey, too, acknowledged that "I don't think there is any realistic chance they'll find the votes in the Senate to remove" him.