This was supposed to be the year that the law banning gays from serving openly in the military would be repealed. President Obama and the top Pentagon brass made clear their distaste for “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Polling suggests the nation has moved past it. The Democrats who control Congress, as well as some Republicans, are ready to overturn it. And last week a final potential obstacle was removed when an exhaustive Pentagon study found little risk in undoing the law.
Yet with the lame-duck session of Congress hurtling toward a chaotic close, the effort to repeal the policy is in peril. A divided Senate panel heard stern testimony Friday from the Marine Corps commandant and the Army chief of staff, who warned against incorporating openly gay troops into combat units now serving in Afghanistan.
But the biggest barrier is the calendar. Although a repeal bill passed the House in May, and there appear to be enough votes for it in the Senate, there are only two weeks left in the lame-duck session. Other priorities, such as negotiating a compromise on extending Bush-era tax cuts, have consumed congressional leaders.
This is why Scott Brown and the Susan Collins feel comfortable pretending they would support the repeal of DADT once “taxes are addressed.” Demand amendments be allowed during the debate, run out the clock, get credit for supporting repeal without ever having to make the vote and risk getting teabagged in the next primary, fool the beltway boys and the idiot independents about how moderate you are, and then sit back and watch the left and gay rights groups blame the Obama administration.
It took Richard Cohen and Dana Milbank a decade to realize John McCain is an asshole. You think the bobbleheads will put two and two together regarding Collins and Brown?
Of course not.
But we’ll still be required to pretend that people who vote every single time with extremists are somehow “moderates.”
DFS
Say what you want about the tenets of naked opportunism, but at least it’s an ethos. Or maybe not.
bkny
and it doesn’t help when the majority leader has other priorities:
Reid pushes bill to allow for online gambling
(AP) – 2 days ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is pushing behind the scenes for lame-duck legislation that would allow poker games over the Internet but restrict initial licenses to casinos and racetrack operators that have been in businesses at least five years.
Some of the biggest casino operators in Reid’s home state of Nevada are eager to get a piece of the online gambling industry, which generates an estimated $5 billion a year for offshore operators.
stuckinred
@DFS: Thank you Walter.
Odie Hugh Manatee
We need statesmen (and women!) in our legislature to get us out of this mess and we have none. What we have now are mostly pansies who only care about keeping their ‘job’ while building their power and wealth. They aren’t there to solve problems and make difficult decisions. They’re there to cash in on the system before it crashes. It’s all a big game of musical chairs and we’re running out of chairs.
And music.
sherifffruitfly
Yup – republicans know full well that whatever they do, “true progressives” will blame Obama for it. So there’s absolutely no downside to republicans behaving as badly as possible 100% of the time. Literally no-one is left to criticize republicans. Their behavior has become completely normalized by “true progressives”.
RalfW
How about an Act Red page for Brown and Collins primary opponents! I’m ready to push the GOP a little farther to the right – make them honest in their abhorrence of anything remotely compassionate, fair, or even popular with the general public.
Cacti
Susan Collins supports some liberal policies…
Up until it’s time for a vote.
My only consolation is some teabagger lunatic will still primary her no matter what she does.
Tim
God, Cole, you are amazingly codependent.
Once again, you’d have me believe that Susan Collins and Scott Brown are steamrolling poor little Harry Reid and Barack Obama, who as we know because you tell us all the time, are ABSOLUTELY POWERLESS in the face of Collins’ and Browns’ awesomeness, and that of other determined Repubs.
As was pointed out above, Reid has found time to push online gaming during the lame duck…hmmm…interesting, that.
Cacti
@Tim:
Keep clapping those hands…
“I do believe there are 60 votes. I do! I do!”
Comrade Luke
@sherifffruitfly: Where is there any reference in this post to “true progressives” and whether or not they blame Obama for this or anything else?
Nice of you to shut everyone up before they can even say anything.
What a ridiculous comment.
Tim
Another term for the BJ lexicon: COLEDEPENDENT, as applied to the supporters of politicians, elected officials, military types, etc. whose lies, distortions, betrayals, and general bad behavior are endlessly enabled in the style of John Cole, who makes ever-evolving excuses and fashions complicated, pretzel-like rationalizations for why it must be so and why the public figure cannot be expected to achieve better results. This condition is marked by a constant lowering of expectations, a tendency toward authoritarianism, an irrational/juvenile need for strong “daddy” figures, and vulnerability to cults of personality.
Cacti
@Tim:
Okay, so who’s the Repub that will cross over and make it so? And what will bring about said cross over?
Jrod the Cookie Thief
@sherifffruitfly: Yes, I’m sure Republicans are solely worried about what “true progressives” have to say. Forget the vast, mushy middle that decides every election in this country; as long as that 1% of the country that makes up the Obama-hating left stays riled up, Republicans can’t lose! Why, oh why, do those “true progressives” continue to single-handedly hand the right victory after victory?
Thoroughly Pizzled
@Tim: That doesn’t even rhyme!
RosiesDad
@Cacti: If Collins gets tea bagged in the primary, that will pretty much assure victory for whatever Democrat is running for the seat. The same can be said for Brown’s seat (which would have remained with the Democrats had they fielded a more likable candidate than Martha Coakley).
Cacti
@RosiesDad:
I don’t think Maine has a sore loser law. If not, the ice witches could still run as Indies and probably win.
Allan
How interesting that Obama’s approval rating is up, driven by an uptick in support among independents. It’s almost as if there’s an electoral advantage as being seen as the reasonable centrist or something.
Cacti
@Allan:
Nah man.
It was the Netroots that put him over the top in states like Ohio, Indiana, Virginia, Florida and North Carolina.
Anya
@Tim: Okay I’ll bite, tell me how to achieve the 60 votes?
Obama Quotes Village Voice
Davis X. Machina
Collins won, 60-40, in 2008, against the national tide, against one of the state’s most popular Democratic politicians. She doesn’t have to worry about a hypothetical teabag primary challenge until 2014. By then there may not be a tea party movement.
If she does something, it’s because she wants to do something.The question is, what’s the something? I find national-ticket aspirations explain more of what she’s done and is doing than anything else.
Kryptik
@Davis X. Machina:
It’s simpler than that. It’s the single driving force behind the GOP and sadly way too many on both sides of the aisle:
Hippie punching the Dems for fun and profit. Of course, only the right sees the profit. Everyone else just does it for the fun.
Allan
@Davis X. Machina: If Senator Esmerelda from Bewitched has any national-ticket aspirations, she’s mainlining maple syrup.
Davis X. Machina
@Allan: After the tea-party crazy burns itself out, she sweeps in to pick up the pieces.
A Northerner, after Southerners destroyed the party.
A woman. Pro-choice, but discreetly so.
Not a God-botherer.
Not obviously crazy.
Can plausibly be sold as a fiscal-conservative-social liberal. (For the ANWR drilling ban. For Family Leave Act. Against impeachment in ’98)
Doesn’t look, sound, or act like a pol — she’s the anti-Hailey Barbour. Her weird speech is part of that pose.
She’s being very careful to not burn bridges for the time being, but especially after a Palin or Huckabee run, she’d be well positioned.
Laugh if you want, but bookmark this post….
Tim
@Anya:
You are exhibiting another Coledependent symptom: The belief that it is MY job, or the job of other private citizens, to not only support and help elect Democratic politicians, but then to actually RESEARCH and PERFORM the TASKS required of them to DO the job for which they were elected/hired in keeping with their general beliefs/convictions as expressed and implied during their campaigns.
I am an artist/writer/designer. Reid and Obama do not do my work for me. I do not propose to do theirs for them.
I do have eyes to see and ears to hear that the Republicans are very successful at obtaining their objectives, whether they are in the minority or majority. Dems fail regardless. But somehow that is MY fault because I’m not phoning in strategy plans to Reid and Obama.
stuckinred
@Tim: Pretty impressed with yourself there huh? whoop-tee-dooo
celticdragonchick
@Anya:
Fuck it. Beats me. The Snow Queens are beyond redemption.
The court system is the only avenue…and the repubs are cool with that because they get to fund raise against the “librul black robed tyrants” etc etc.
Thoroughly Pizzled
@Tim: “COLEDEPENDENT” DOESN’T EVEN RHYME WITH ANYTHING!
beergoggles
@celticdragonchick:
Can’t do it legislatively because of the republicans.
Can’t do it via the courts because our guys keep fighting us there.
And then the obots ask us to clap louder because we aren’t cheering enough for our guys fighting against us.
Tim
@stuckinred:
What the fuck does that even mean?
Evolved Deep Southerner
@Thoroughly Pizzled: Yes it does. “Old Resplendent.”
In case you’re writing a song or something.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@Tim: It means you’re overinformed and undereducated, dumbass.
Raul
@Tim: He means you’re a wanker who is a tad too impressed with himself.
Nick
@beergoggles:
We can do it legislatively with Republicans, it just means we may need to give up on a whole lot first.
beergoggles
@Nick: I don’t trust the republicans to keep their word after that whole lot has been given.
Do you?
Case
I’ve given up on Congress and the White House doing the right thing when it comes to DADT and civil rights.
I highly doubt The Ice Queen and the Playgirl Centerfold will vote for “repeal”.
We’ll win our human rights in the courts,despite the Justice Department’s aggressive GOP style tactics.
Neither an apologist nor a firebagger. Just a weary and defeated gay man.
El Cid
But this time she really will let us kick the football.
daveNYC
@beergoggles: Not only do I not trust them to keep their word, I’d hate to see what they would require in return for giving their word.
Nick
@beergoggles:
If you can’t trust Republicans to keep their word, you can’t govern.
aimai
Its quite simple, really. Obama and Reid should propose to hold the tax cut vote last–at midnight during the last day of the lame duck if, and only if, every single vote before then in the Senate gets an “up or down vote.” If the Republicans can’t manage that then there simply *is no vote on the Obama tax cuts* and Obama and Reid tell the people “The Republican party refused to vote on the Obama tax cuts at all. If they plan to do something about it during the two years they hold power in the House we welcome that.”
There is simply no way that good negotiations would have allowed the minority party to put the goodie it wants to get first in line, and to keep informing us that “probably” they would vote for DADT, DREAM etc… after the tax issue is worked out. Taxes last and then pull out the fucking football and let them all expire after the Republicans have had to vote for cloture on everything else. Hell, I’d make them vote against the filibuster to get to millionaire tax cuts, even if it can only be symbolic.
aimai
beergoggles
@Nick: lol
Barb (formerly Gex)
It is pretty clear that despite what people say about gay rights, they don’t give a fuck. They care, in the way that they care about dolphins getting caught in fishing nets. It’s great if the dolphins don’t get caught in the net, just don’t interfere with me getting the tuna I want.
The reason gay issues are so good for the culture wars is that there is such a small number of people on the pro-gay side who are truly affected and thus prioritize these issues.
I expect this to continue. I don’t blame Obama for any of it. Just remember he’s a black constitutional scholar that advocates separate but equal for gay people because of his religious beliefs. After that, any expectation you might have had of him on gay issues might just look too grandiose.
It’s not our time. It’s doesn’t matter to enough people. Whatever.
My guess is that the DADT policy changes sometime after the Iran war starts and we are out of skinheads, felons, and developmentally disabled people to enlist.