RUSH: Here’s Mike Castle yesterday in Washington on Capitol Hill. This was during an interview with an unidentified Fox News reporter, and Castle explaining why he lost.
CASTLE: I think the, uh, misrepresentations of — uh, the lies of, uh, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh on the air were another very significant, uh, part, uh, of all of this. Uhhhh, I think some of the misrepresentations of my opponent’s race were a part of it, uh, as — as well. How they ever came up with the theory I voted to impeach George Bush, I — I’ll never know. I mean… And — and — and that was the news for, uh, a couple days, uh, right around the election time by, uh, I think Mr. Limbaugh. But those are the kinds of things that — that make politics very difficult.
RUSH: Yeah, except the problem is I never said it. You know what happened? During that period of time on the program I was discussing this, I got an e-mail from a very prominent Republican saying, ‘Look, I don’t know what you’re saying, but Bush 43’s office phones are ringing off the hook saying that Castle voted to impeach him, and Bush doesn’t like it.’ I said, ‘I didn’t say that Castle voted to impeach Bush. What I said was that Castle voted to move the Kucinich resolution for impeachment to the Judiciary Committee, which was run by John Conyers, who was calling for Bush’s impeachment.’ I also mentioned that the strategery was to move it to the… Look, the Democrats had to do it because their base was freaking out, and Kucinich was freakin’ out. So they had to entertain Kucinich.
Just like Chait says we have to be thrown bones now and then, well, the Democrats had to throw little Kucinich a bone and the Daily Kos kooks a bone and pretend they were gonna impeach Bush. So they let Kucinich write a resolution, they’re going to send it to the Judiciary Committee, Conyers runs it, where they’re gonna kill it. The thing is, Mike Castle voted for it. He voted to move the resolution. Now, he didn’t have to vote for it. It was going to die anyway. A hundred sixty Democrats voted for the Kucinich resolution that was moved to the Judiciary Committee. A lot of Republicans did not vote for it, but Castle did. Castle voted to move the resolution to the Judiciary Committee, which is the process for getting the impeachment ball rolling. But nobody wanted to do it. The Democrats didn’t want to impeach Bush. They didn’t want to get rid of the target-rich environment out there. They didn’t want to do that.
They wanted Bush there. Bush’s approval numbers were at 25% or whatever it was. Even the main site behind this resolution, the impeach Bush site, said that if it did not get moved to the Judiciary Committee, it would have gone to a floor vote where it would have lost by a laughingly large number. Going to the Judiciary Committee gave them hope. Only 24 Republicans voted for this thing, and Castle was one of them. Now, did the other Republicans want Bush to be impeached? A lot of people when these things come up, things like this, some of these people look at it, ‘You gotta vote the way your constituents want.’ He didn’t have to vote for this thing. Now he’s out there saying I voted to impeach Bush. He doesn’t understand why. Well, because I didn’t say it. But stop and think of this. I’m sitting here minding my own business doing this program. While that’s happening I’m getting an e-mail from somebody close to Bush 43 saying, ‘Look, I don’t know what you’re doing, but Bush’s office is getting reamed here saying Castle voted to impeach him.’ I said, ‘I didn’t say that.’ Anyway, we’re striking nerves practically every segment on this program this week.