Word: speaker
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...reason was the leadership vacuum in the House G.O.P. Newt Gingrich was out of the picture, and Speaker-elect Livingston was loath to guide impeachment proceedings, perhaps because he feared that his own extramarital affairs would be exposed. Control of the process had fallen to House whip Tom DeLay, the hardest of anti-Clinton hard-liners, who had ensured that moderates favoring censure had no place...
Early Wednesday Clinton called Speaker-elect Livingston to discuss Iraq for the second time that week, this time to say an attack had to begin immediately in order to take Saddam by surprise and avoid starting the campaign during Ramadan, the holiest month in the Islamic calendar. In turn, Livingston promised the President he would delay the impeachment vote...
...Livingston came under pressure from G.O.P. hard-liners not to postpone the vote for longer than one day. DeLay and majority leader Dick Armey were especially angry to learn that Livingston had already told Dick Gephardt he would postpone the vote. As a G.O.P. leadership source said, "The new Speaker has to learn that he can't make deals with the Democrats without consulting the elected leadership first." But even some G.O.P. moderates who had come out against Clinton wanted a quick vote before opponents in their districts had time to organize a backlash...
...that Clinton's goal was to push off the vote until just before Christmas, making the Republicans look just as nasty as if they had voted during the Iraq assaults. According to some sources, DeLay hinted that if Livingston held the vote off, he wouldn't last long as Speaker, a job he had yet to assume. "We're going to get hit either way," he told Livingston. "Get it over with, or the members will rebel...
...that time Livingston knew that he needed DeLay's help; the story of his adulterous affairs was about to go public. At midday the two men began conferring on how to handle the impending blowup. Within a few hours, the Speaker-designate had decided to go public with his problems before anyone else did. Livingston considered offering to resign in the conference meeting; if he did, DeLay planned to stand up, praise Livingston for his courage and refuse his resignation...