Politics & Power Quote by Robert Torricelli

Power here comes from the cold arithmetic of hypocrisy. Torricelli isn’t arguing impeachment on moral grounds; he’s reframing it as a gamble against the voters’ own revealed preferences. By pointing out that these Republican incumbents come from states Clinton carried, he turns a constitutional drama into an electoral trap: you can posture in Washington, but you still have to answer to a state-level electorate that, not long ago, chose the very man you’re trying to expel.

The intent is surgical. Torricelli is signaling to moderates, swing voters, and nervous donors that impeachment isn’t just partisan excess, it’s strategically misaligned. The line “all of whom voted for the impeachment” is doing double duty: it paints the incumbents as rigid party soldiers while implying they ignored the political reality at home. The subtext is that these Republicans have mistaken their base for their state. That’s not merely a critique; it’s an invitation for challengers to nationalize the midterms around backlash and overreach.

Context matters: the Clinton impeachment era was saturated with moral language, but also fatigue. Many voters read the proceedings as punishment disproportionate to the offense, or as a Washington obsession detached from daily life. Torricelli’s sentence exploits that gap. He doesn’t defend Clinton’s behavior; he defends the electorate’s patience. In one clean statistic, he casts impeachment as an act of political self-harm - and dares opponents to keep swinging while standing on unfriendly turf.