MAY 16, 2017, AT 5:31 AM
By Julia Azari, Perry Bacon Jr. and Harry Enten
... We went back and looked at key congressional votes during three relatively recent periods in which a president was accused of wrongdoing: Watergate (Richard Nixon), Iran-contra (Ronald Reagan) and the Monica Lewinsky scandal (Bill Clinton). Two trends stick out. First, partisanship still matters. And in a big way. Second, when defections do come, they’re more likely to come from the centrist wing of a party.
Even as Nixon aides resigned and the Watergate controversy grew around the president in 1973, many congressional Republicans were arguing that the investigations of the president were overly aggressive. Two future GOP presidents, George H.W. Bush (then chairman of the Republican National Committee) and Reagan (then governor of California), called Nixon and assured him that he could get through the scandal. Things escalated in October 1973 when Nixon ordered the firing of the special prosecutor investigating his administration, leading both the attorney general and deputy attorney general to resign, in what is now known as the “Saturday Night Massacre” ...
The 1998 House votes impeaching Clinton — who was essentially accused of lying and trying to block the investigation into his his affair with White House intern Lewinsky — were also split almost entirely along partisan lines, with the Republican majority ensuring that two of the four articles of impeachment were adopted.2 Clinton was impeached on a perjury charge in a 228-206 vote; 223 Republicans and five Democrats voted “yes,” while 200 Democrats, five Republicans and one independent voted against it. On the other charge to pass, obstruction of justice, 216 Republicans and five Democrats voted “yes,” while 199 Democrats, 12 Republicans and one independent voted “no” ...
... during Iran-contra, Democrats controlled the House but did not push to impeach the president. Special congressional committees in the House and Senate were created to investigate the Reagan administration’s sale of weapons to Iran and the sending of money to the “contras,” a group fighting the governing regime in Nicaragua.3 There was a final, joint report that blasted the administration for violating a number of laws and suggested that Reagan — whose administration said he was unaware of the actions of his aides — should have known what was going on. The two committees, combined, had 15 Democrats and 11 Republicans. All 15 Democrats but just three of the Republicans signed on to the official report, while eight of the 11 Republicans wrote a minority report dissenting from the majority’s findings ...
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/even-the-biggest-scandals-cant-kill-party-loyalty/
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