Tuesday, December 22, 1998 -- ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA -- I have to chuckle each time it happens.

The Republicans will deliver what they think, after six-odd years of pummeling, will finally be The Blow That Finishes Bill Clinton.

It doesn't matter if it's the Nixon gunsel Rehnquist stating that the bogus Paula Jones case can go forward during Clinton's term. Or if it's the data dump of the raw, deliberately unedited (so as to make it harder for Clinton's defenders to comb through for exculpatory evidence) hunk of bilge called the Starr Report. Or if it's showing the videotapes of the President's testimony. Or if it's playing the illegally-created Tripp tapes. Or if it's spending $10 million on Monica-related campaign ads in the week before the election -- even after promising that they would do no such thing.

It will be vicious. It will be partisan. It will be unfair. And their buddies in the media -- who they either own outright (Fox Networks, Washington Times, CBN, etc.) or have "bought" through Ken Starr's illegal-as-hell grand jury information leaks -- will provide the cover that insures the story gets spun their way.

And it will backfire.

Just this weekend, the Republican-controlled exercise in railroading called the House Impeachment Hearings finished up with a vote, done almost totally along party lines, to impeach our President, William Jefferson Clinton, on two of the four charges brought against him -- and guess what?

His approval ratings are now over 70%. 72%, according to NBC's poll; 73% according to the CBS poll.

Furthermore, over 60% of those polled by CBS believe that the impeachment was done solely to harm the President, not because there was any real justification for it.

Ouch.

Meanwhile, the Republicans are staggering under the weight of DISapproval ratings of 54% in the latest CBS poll -- ratings that are even worse than they were last month, when the Gross Old Party, instead of gaining 60+ House seats, managed to LOSE five. (Bet if the elections were held today, the GOP majority would be gone.)

And, as always is the case after each magnificent backfire, the Republicans stand around, scratch their heads, and ask, "Why?"

Why? I'll tell you why. It has to do with pro wrestling.

Bear with me here; there is a point to all this.

Pro wrestling, of course, is "fake" in that the endings of matches are (usually) pre-determined. What is NOT fake, however, is that it is a very athletically challenging art, and, in the hands of the masters, an aesthetically and intellectually challenging one, too. (Anyone who thinks wrestling is all fake and no one ever risks getting hurt: I challenge you to replicate the WWF's Mick "Mankind" Foley's fall from the top of a 20-foot-high cage onto a wooden table -- and walk away from it like he did, with one of his teeth wedged in his upper lip.)

If you think of wrestling as a balletically violent form of soap opera, with heroes and villains, you won't be far off the mark. At its best, wrestling can be almost Capraesque in its delineation of good versus evil -- or how evil can have good in it, or how even the best men and women can be tempted. This is how fan emotions are stoked and interest is maintained.

The key to exciting fan interest is the play of opposites: of hero (known in behind-the-scenes talk as "babyface" or just plain "face") and villain (or "heel"). A wrestler will often find the character he or she plays switched back and forth from heel to babyface and back many times during a career. There are many popular faces -- such as Ric Flair of WCW -- who started as heels, but whose inherent babyface charisma made then natural heroes. This is when the "face turn" is called for.

A "face turn" -- turning a wrestler from heel to babyface -- can be executed many different ways, but one of the best and easiest is to have the wrestler is question endure some humiliation so shocking in its unfairness that the crowd's sympathy is immediately engaged with the heel-wrestler-to-be-turned-face. The more true face charisma possessed by the wrestler, the better the turn will take. This is called "piling it on".

The best example of the "pile on" face turn lately has been that of the WWF's female wrestler Chyna, who was physically and verbally brought low while made helpless by Rocky Maivia (a wrestler whom the WWF vainly tries to turn heel by making him do one evil thing after another, but who is possessed of such incredible face charisma that truly turning him heel is all-but-impossible).

Which brings us back to Bill Clinton.

President Clinton, despite all the attacks, all the lawsuits -- which are being exposed, one by one, as being without any merit whatsoever -- all the vituperation directed his way by jealous gamma-males in the GOP and in the press, has been pretty darned popular throughout his two terms as President. He's generally well thought of, especially by women who like his attempts to fix Social Security and by men who don't feel threatened by his movie-star good looks and charisma.

And the attacks of the last year have only enhanced his popularity.

You see, the Republicans, drastically underestimated both the intelligence and compassion of the American people -- and unwittingly are giving Bill Clinton a "pile on" that could turn Mussolini into a babyface, were he subjected to it.

And when the object of this pile-on is ALREADY a babyface, is ALREADY known to the people as a well-meaning, occasionally fallible yet warm-hearted guy, well....

I think you get the picture.

Suffice to say that the GOP strategists, should they wind up being out of work after November 2000, will never find alternate careers as wrestling promoters. That would take brains and empathy -- both of which seem to be in pretty short supply in the GOP just now.