Dean: "These guys are out of credibility"

"Chris Matthews talked to Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean about Tom DeLay's resignation and the upcoming elections in November. This is an excerpt from their conversation.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Governor Dean, as chairman of the National Committee of the Democratic Party, do you have anything to say about the possibility, the probability or even the chance that if the Democrats get control of the House of Representatives and the subpoena power, they’ll use it to investigate, impeach, or censure President Bush?

HOWARD DEAN: It's interesting, I think the real election issue in this election is do you want more of the same or do you want something different. We’re different. We’re not like the Republicans. We don’t jump to conclusions, we don’t think impeachment is as trivial as the Republicans seemed to think it was when they tried to impeach President Clinton.

I think we ought to stick with the facts, lets find out what the facts are. But this notion is automatically we are going to raise taxes, impeach the president, this is nonsense. This is right wing stuff and that’s why the Republicans are in such trouble. They just make this stuff up and they put it out there.

What we want to do is bring the country back together again. We want to bring this country back together again so everybody is respected and when we take power back in 2006. We'll do that in the Senate and the House.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Governor, let me ask you about Russ Feingold. He's out there, the Democratic senator from Wisconsin, saying that he would like to have the president censured for the National Security Agency’s electronic spying.

Do you think that’s something Democrats should be considering doing once you get the subpoena power that comes with the majority status in the Congress?

HOWARD DEAN: We can certainly look into all that stuff, and we would like to know what the president knew and when he knew it. But there is a lot to do in America, and revenge against the president is not the first thing on the Democratic Party agenda.

The first thing on our agenda is dealing with Iraq. The idea the president is going to leave this to the next president, I think, is a disgrace.

So, again, you know, sure, the president has not been honest with the American people. Undoubtedly, that is a huge problem. Something should be done about it, but that is not the first thing on our agenda."

-from MSNBC, with video.