It’s dead during the term of this administration, and never mind what TPMDC thinks. I’d give credit for the Obama administration for at least not duplicating the public relations fiasco that the Clinton administration got itself into sixteen years ago, but do we really want to reward a lack of intestinal fortitude?
Frank: Democrats Punting on ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Until 2010
Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said Thursday that Democratic leaders won’t push to repeal the controversial “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy governing gay service in the military until 2010.
“I believe we should and will do ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ next year,” said Frank, a co-chairman of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Equality Caucus. “We haven’t done the preliminary work, the preparatory work. It would be a mistake to bring it up without a lot of lobbying and a lot of conversation.”
And next year we’ll hear another reason why gay people can’t openly serve, and the year after that there’ll be yet another reason (which will probably involve the increased GOP presence in Congress), and the year after that – well, that’s an election year, and so it’s understandable that the administration will be forced by circumstances to not play up the issue, right? And so on, and so on, and so on. The truth of it is, the Democratic leadership doesn’t want to open that can of worms. Ever. It’s like DoMA all over again: if they tried repealing the law, the only thing that would happen would be an embarrassing failure in Congress as roughly half the Democratic caucus (that’s a guess) either abstained or voted against repeal.
This does not please me, by the way: I think that we should allow gay people to serve openly in the military (I’m aware that this is a minority position in my party, and in this context I’m frankly indifferent to whether you agree with me on it). I do find it exasperating that the Democratic Party is so adamantly against having this topic settled once and for all, even when it controls the executive and legislative branches of government…
Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.
The Dems will punt “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” because they don’t have the bonafides with the military in order to pull it off. They’ve already been losing the military vote by huge margins for nearly every election since Reagan, and they don’t want to spend another generation in that particular doghouse.
OTOH, the removal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is probably going to require a Sarah Palin or Bobby Jindal as President in order to happen.