Monday, November 08, 2010

Lame Duck quackery on DADT - Updated

It doesn't get any lamer than this for the upcoming Lame Duck session. The Wall Street Journal tells me Carl Levin and McCain are scheming to derail DADT by stripping it out of the military appropriations bill. I really hope this is just another badly informed WSJ report. I can't think of anything more sucidal for the Dems than to cave on this issue.

Adam Serwer expresses my "awe":
Look, if Democrats can't repeal a policy more than two thirds of the American people, including a majority of conservatives want gone then they can't expect people to vote for them. Preserving DADT is rank absurdity, even in 1993 the RAND study commissioned by the government showed that combat effectiveness would not be harmed by allowing openly gay servicemembers to serve, and the fact that DADT investigations are sometimes delayed when servicemembers are deployed undermines the notion that openly gay servicemembers harm the war effort.
If this is true, then I give up myself. There isn't a safer victory they could go for than DADT. And yeah, I've heard that a lot of the LGBT voted for Republicans. (No, I don't understand why either but John Cole already has the ultimate rant about it.) But surely the Dems can't be so clueless to think they did it because they wanted to kill the policy.

Update: The good news is it appears to be shoddy reporting at WSJ. No evidence that Dem leadership is on board with Levin and:

[UPDATE @ 7:25 PM: Dan Pfeiffer, White House communications director, said in a statement on Monday evening, "The White House opposes any effort to strip 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' from the National Defense Authorization Act."]

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