I had wanted to post this earlier today, but got busy getting ready for a two week trip. It is still timely and relevant.Over the past 24 hours, Mike Castle has been attacked for voting to refer Articles of Impeachment to the House Judiciary Committee against President George W. Bush.He did. So did 24 other Republicans including Peter King of New York.Now, I don’t know Mike Castle’s mind or heart, but I do know that pretty much all of the 24 Republicans went on record that they did this to highlight the frustration they felt with the Democrats continually beating up on President Bush and then refusing to put their money where their mouth was.This particular vote, on a privileged resolution by Rep. Marvin the Martian, was opposed by the Democratic leadership, but they gambled that not enough Republicans would vote for it so all the Democrats could vote for it, it would not reach the hurdle it needed to reach to take action (which was larger than a basic majority vote), and they could move on to other matters until it came up again.So 24 Republicans, having had enough and wanting to be finally done with the idiocy, voted to send it to committee instead of having to tie up the floor of the House to deal with it. Here is a pretty good reflection of it from the time:

Today’s vote was largely along party lines, with no Democrats voting against it and only 24 Republicans voting for it. Among Republicans voting yes: Steve LaTourette of Concord Township and Mike Turner of Dayton.That doesn’t mean that either wants to impeach Bush. To the contrary, LaTourette said he voted that way in order to move the resolution off the House floor and follow regular order.Turner had a similar rationale.”The House has more important things to be focused on,” he said.

I very much want to take out Mike Castle. For me it is about moving the Senate GOP to the right, not moving the Senate to the GOP. We can do that in 2 years when the Democrats will be running with a worse re-election calendar for them than this year. But this attack was a distraction.