Posted on 09/14/2010 9:43:38 AM PDT by WaterBoard
Rush Limbaugh today stated on his radio show that Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE) voted in favor of House Resolution 1258 on June 11, 2008.
What was "On Motion to Refer: H RES 1258 The Kucinich Privilege Resolution"?
Answer: "Impeaching George W. Bush, President of the United States, of high crimes and misdemeanors"
24 Republicans voted with the Democrat majority and that did include Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE).
Vote Record: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=h2008-401
Bill Information: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=hr110-1258
(Excerpt) Read more at govtrack.us ...
OFGS. Castle is not a perfect candidate by any stretch of the imagination, but at least nail him where he deserves to be nailed. He did NOT support impeachment of Bush.
Nail him on what he is really guilty of doing unless you want to be cast in the same slime you accuse him of being cast. When caught lying on one issue (or merely guilty of being misinformed or suffering parliamentary ignorance), it casts doubt upon everything one says.
Rush screwed the pooch on this one.
Kucinich effort to impeach Bush kicked into limbo:
An attempt by Rep. Dennis Kucinich to impeach President Bush was kicked into legislative no-man's land by members of his own party Wednesday.The House voted 251-166 to send the Ohio Democrat's impeachment resolution to committee, a maneuver that allows the Democratic leadership to freeze the measure indefinitely
...
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly said she would not support a resolution calling for Bush's impeachment, saying such a move was unlikely to succeed and would be divisive.
...
All 166 votes in favor of opening up a House impeachment debate came from Republicans, apparently eager to bring up the vote immediately and paint Democrats as political creatures in a time of serious issues.
To summarize: A vote against committing was in fact a vote to bring impeachment to the floor for a vote. The republicans who voted NO were voting for "impeachment", so they could have the debate and then vote it down.
The vote FOR commitment was to STOP the impeachment bill, to kill it, to make it go away. The Democratic leadership indicated that their caucus had to vote to commit, because they didn't want to lose the vote on the issue.
So, if you want to argue that Castle went against his party by not playing along with the game of endorsing an impeachment hearing on the floor of the house, you are absolutely correct.
But you are totally and completely WRONG if you believe that a vote to send the bill to committee was a vote FOR the bill, or a vote in SUPPORT of the bill. The Democrats didn't want an impeachment vote; they were opposed to an impeachment vote, and sent the bill to a committee in order to get rid of it without having to actually vote on it, inflaming their base.
BTW, the same thing happened the previous year, when Kucinich tried to impeach Cheney:
Last year, Kucinich introduced a resolution to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney. But the attempt failed in November, when Republicans tried to force a debate on it. Democrats voted to send the resolution to the House Judiciary Committee, where the committee chairman, Rep. John Conyers, has taken no action on it.Now, why did some vote FOR killing the bill, when the supposed official position of republicans was to debate the bill? That is a question to ask the house minority leader. It could well be that they wanted to LOOK like they were up for a debate, but didn't actually want to vote FOR a debate that could be misconstrued as voting for impeachment.
If that was the case, they would have counted the progressive democrat votes that could have brought the bill to the floor, and had enough republicans vote Yea to ensure that a last-minute vote switch couldn't bring the bill to the floor.
Or, it could just be that 24 republicans decided that something as serious as impeachment wasn't to be played for political purposes. Or it could be that some didn't want to have the impeachment debate, because they thought it would hurt them in their election (but note that their votes didn't SEEM to be needed to kill the bill, as all democrats voted to kill it).
It seemed clear to me at the time that the democrats decided to vote unanimously to kill their own bill, and then spin that as a vote FOR impeachment. The left-wing talking points for the next day certainly claimed that.
But it is a shame to see rational conservative freepers fall for the left-wing spin of their own party leadership stabbing them in the back.
It sure is giving Castle the benefit of the doubt to say he voted “aye” knowing it would be killed in committee. Knowing both of their voting histories, I would be happy to accept that argument for Peter King, but with the Democrats in the majority and their total hatred of Bush, no one can argue that Castle was just voting a strategy.
An “aye” was to kill the bill. a “Nay” vote was to debate the bill on the floor and then vote on it, a vote the majority of republicans wanted to have to force democrats to vote against impeachment on the floor, for political purposes.
“So, if you want to argue that Castle went against his party by not playing along with the game of endorsing an impeachment hearing on the floor of the house, you are absolutely correct.”
But doesn’t that just end it right there? The whole pro-Castle argument is that we need to have his 51st vote because he’s play on our team.
The fact of the matter is he doesn’t. When the Republican leadership comes up with a strategy, for whatever reason. They can’t count on him to play along because he’s a “maverick” who is going to go his own way, which usually means going with what the Democrats want.
YOu do know that Castle is resigning his House seat,and that he is running for an open Senate seat.
I know that some people have called him the “incumbent”, but that is not literally accurate. It’s merely less false than some of the other claims.
And I’m betting that if we brought up the tape of Rush talking about this vote back when it happened, we’d find he understood the vote and what it meant.
And if he wanted to use it against Castle, he wouldn’t say that Castle supported impeachment (which is false), he’d say that Castle didn’t want to play along with the political game his leadership was pushing.
Then nail him for THAT... not make up BS that he was FOR impeachment. It makes the TEA party look to be either liars and/or fools... just like the other parties.
Because that conversation had nothing to do with the impeachment resolution, and occured at a different time, about a different matter.
Its very confusing and terrifying, but you're right, people who live outside Delaware should shut up.
Seeing both sides of this argument is not helping me, so I'll just be over here under my bed, trembling, with my fingers and toes crossed.
How much ya wanna bet?
He was for the Democrat’s position on impeachment, and against his Republican colleagues position on impeachment.
If that’s the guy you want, go vote for him.
If the motion to commit hadn't passed, the bill would have remained on the floor, where there would have been a debate, and a vote. The "Yea" vote was to kill the bill by commiting it to a committee. The "No" vote was to bring the bill to the floor, where it could be debated and voted on.
The Republican leadership supported bringing the bill to the floor because they knew it would embarass the democrats with their liberal constituents to have to vote AGAINST considering the bill, but it would also embarass the democrats to have the bill come to the floor and then lose.
Some republicans, like Pete King, decided that impeachment was too important to play politics with, and voted to kill the bill because they wanted it killed.
The DEMOCRATS voted to kill the bill because they wanted it to go away, because it hurt them with their base.
The majority of Republicans voted in SUPPORT of the bill's consideration, to NOT kill it, because they felt it was good politics to have an impeachment debate and vote.
The issue was about HOW the democrats would be embarrassed, not about impeachment.
Anybody who claims Castle's vote was FOR impeachment is ignorant of the situtation, or lying on purpose. His vote was to KILL impeachment. But the republicans who voted against killing the bill were ALSO against impeachment, they just wanted to debate the bill and vote on the floor of the house.
If there were enough votes to support impeachment, the republicans would have all voted to commit the bill to committee, and the democrats would have voted to bring the bill to a vote.
I wouldn’t be so sure that Rush is agreeing with them. Rush could be talking about Castle’s discussion with Bush about losing support for the war, and they could be mistakenly think he’s talking about the impeachment vote.
Rush usually realises when he’s wrong, corrects it, and moves on. I’d be surprised if he was still saying Castle voted for impeachment, when it is so obviously false.
O’Donnell was the only republican in the 2008 primary. So she wasn’t really “elected” or “selected”, she was all they had.
Her campaign manager for 2008 is now supporting Castle, because she says O’Donnell used campaign funds for her and her boyfriend’s personal use while not paying campaign workers. I have no idea whether the manager is a good person or not, but since O’Donnell chose her as campaign manager, I’ll presume that at some point O’Donnell thought she was good enough.
Sure it can, but it didn't here.
The Impeach the Bushers - just like so many here - didn't understand the parliamentary trick employed by the Republicans. Why do I say that? Because they were shocked that after calling Castle's office he didn't want to impeach Bush. They couldn't understand why he'd vote for the resolution, and not want to impeach Bush.
I suspect they were suffering from the same thing that many here seem to be suffering from - public schools.
"Castle can claim anything he wants, but he didn't vote to kill the bill and no day late doubletalk will change that."
Not according to Jim Gerhaty, who wrote an article about this very fact at the time of the vote.
I frequently find that people will use the phrase "double talk when they read something they - because of their own intellectual shortcomings - can't understand. Just saying.
You think Pete King and Frank Wolf, both firm Bush supporters, were also making an "anti-Bush symbolic vote"?
If so, your belief is ignorant, and not based on the facts.
That is correct. Glad somebody can read. Imagine if Castle had voted to bring it to the floor for a vote — the O’Donnell people would be screaming how he wanted to vote for impeachment on the floor.
The fact that Castle voted for this bill gives the appearance of supporting impeachment. I don’t claim to know what was in his heart during this process.
What I do know is that today, because of his weak voting record on other issues that are important to conservatives, his vote on the Kookcinich bill raises serious questions.
Did Castle actually support impeachment? Was his vote calculated only to appease the Rat voters in his state? Or didn’t he have enough integrity to say “no” to his Republican leadership? Did he feel so secure in his position of power that he felt he could simply play the political game with no future consequences?
There is no benefit of the doubt needed, the MAJORITY LEADER said she was voting to send the bill to committee in order to KILL it, and the same thing happened the previous year with impeachment for the VP.
The Democrats were looking at an election where the surge had started to work and they had an anti-surge candidate; they also had a base opposed to a war that they had not been able to stop.
They didn’t want an impeachment vote they knew their own caucus couldn’t afford to support.
Most republicans decided it would be fun to play politics with the vote. A few decided impeachment was too important to play politics with. I don’t fault those who wanted to bring it to a vote to kill it, but I’m not stupid enough to think those who voted to kill the bill wanted it to pass.
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