Posted on 12/16/2010 8:34:49 AM PST by SeekAndFind
ABC News reports that Scott Brown has announced that he will support a stand-alone repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” ending the expulsion of gay and lesbian troops from the military. Brown’s decision gives Harry Reid 61 votes, enough to pass a cloture vote for the policy, and one final hurrah for the Democratic-controlled 111th Session — if he can fit it into the schedule:
Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown today voiced his support for a stand-alone repeal of the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, bringing the bill one vote over the 60-vote threshold that it will need to reach if and when the Senate votes on the measure in the coming weeks.
“Sen. Brown accepts the Pentagon’s recommendation to repeal the policy after proper preparations have been completed. If and when a clean repeal bill comes up for a vote, he will support it,” said Brown spokesperson Gail Gitcho.
Brown’s backing means that – on paper – supporters of the repeal have61 senators in favor of the bill. On Wednesday Republicans Olympia Snowe of Maine and Lisa Murkowski both announced their support for the stand-alone repeal. The House passed the clean repeal on Wednesday and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has vowed to bring it to a vote in the Senate before the end of the year.
However, Reid has warned that bringing the bill to a vote in the Senate is not an issue of support, but rather of time. With just over a week before Christmas, the Senate is only now kicking off debate on the START nuclear treaty and a massive $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill. It will likely be early next week before the Senate wraps up work on those two measures – and numerous GOP senators have voiced stern opposition to both bills, preferring instead to fund the government into early next year and go home for the holidays. That leaves little time for the Senate to pass the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal.
Brown voted against the military appropriations bill that contained a DADT repeal last week, objecting to a jam-down of a massive spending bill without sufficient debate or amendment opportunities. Two other Republicans that support a repeal, Olympia Snowe and Lisa Murkowski, voted no on the same grounds. A stand-alone bill will avoid those issues and allow the three to switch votes and support repeal, a position publicly held or at least considered by all three prior to the lame-duck session.
The Senate has already passed the tax deal, which was the line drawn in the sand by the GOP at the start of the post-midterm session. Brown can therefore vote for cloture on this measure without violating the earlier pledge, even if Congress hasn’t addressed the budget with a shutdown date rapidly approaching. The GOP wants a continuing resolution anyway rather than an omnibus spending bill completing the FY2011 budget.
Reid, though, has already started debate on START, and still has to handle the budget this week as well. He’s trying to double-track the two efforts, but Jim DeMint has threatened to obstruct if Reid tries a jam-down on START. If DADT doesn’t come up in this session, it will have to be passed again in a Republican House after January, and that may be a problem with the GOP holding a 48-seat majority in the lower chamber. Still, the threat of court action that would immediately impose a repeal rather than an orderly transition may move John Boehner to allow a vote without whipping the caucus early in the next session.
Thank you for reminding us what a toothless, lazy bunch the 2005-2006 GOP-led Congress was. No wonder the nation has deteriorated into its present Leftist mess. The TEA Party should go its own way, since turn-coats such as Scott Brown have shown that they are nothing but fellow travelers with Obama/Reid/Pelosi.
I posted it yesterday...yes, it goes a long way to show the kind of Republican men we have always voted for.
It is WE who are responsible, they just reflect us...and we have always preferred weak, meek, men who don't make waves.
Notice how we always throw under the bus any candidate that gets bad press...that has battle scars?
We usually kill our wounded, and wait for the shiny new one that the press approves of.
This is like mass Oedipal theory of hatred and rebellion against the father and his sense of maturity on a large scale. It was sold via Hollywood from the 50s to the present. No wonder the army is caving.
That noise you hear is Brown’s Republican base slipping away. He’s a one-termer.
I’m shocked! Shocked I tell you!
The difference between flaunting it and not flaunting it is precisely what DADT addresses.
definitely, they may have to force people to join. Of course I’d oppose that, the Army of Sodomy forcing young men to join would be horrific.
Snowe and brown...done in 2012...if the country lasts that long, of course.
I want a Constitutional amendment preventing anyone voted out of office from voting on any bill, appropriation, act, or resolution.
I can only console myself by repeating “Well, he’s better than Martha Coakley or the Swimmer” so many times. From now on he’s nothing but a weak kneed RINO.
Will be a bunch of JAG OFFs only!!!!!
Mine wants to join when he graduates college, I will unnencourage the hell out of that.
Fag JAGs.
You would have preferred the Kennedy clone RAT? I’ll take Brown, thank you. At least he gets it right some of the time.
(It is not just Brown...it is the Republican Party, this is from Sept of this year)
After years of sending in their regrets, Republicans are RSVPing yes to gay causes more than ever.
Prominent GOP lobbyists, activists and Members of Congress will attend or lend their names to two big gay rights events tonight, including one co-hosted by Ken Mehlman, the former Republican National Committee chairman and George W. Bush campaign manager who recently announced he was gay.
In his first gay rights political event since going public with his sexual orientation, Mehlman is hosting a fundraiser for the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which is spearheading the court battle for gay marriage.
The cocktail reception in New York City also features Ted Olson, one of the two lawyers who successfully argued the case before a federal judge in California to overturn the state’s ban on gay marriage. Olson was solicitor general under Bush.
The fundraiser has also drawn a bipartisan host list that includes Mary Cheney, Nichole Wallace, and Steve Schmidt, senior presidential campaign advisers to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
The list also has several high-level Republican lobbyists, including AT&T’s Jim Cicconi and former staffers to one-time Bush political adviser Karl Rove, who encouraged a state anti-gay-marriage referendum in 2004 to drive up conservative turnout in the presidential race.
At the same time as the New York event, the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay rights group, will hold its national dinner in Washington, D.C. Among those attending the Log Cabin dinner or cocktail reception at the Capitol Hill Club are the anti-tax activist Grover Norquist and Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Pete Sessions (Texas) had been scheduled to attend the Log Cabin dinner but is now not expected because of a House Republican caucus meeting that evening.
To some observers, tonight’s events are indicative of a growing change in attitude among at least some in the Republican Party who for years were wary of having their names attached to gay rights events, fearing that it would alienate the party’s base.
“There is a general cultural shift,” said R. Clarke Cooper, the executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, who worked in the Bush administration. “Being conservative and gay are not mutually exclusive.”
The participation by Republicans in these events, however, does not signal a wholesale change in party stands on gay issues. GOP Senators were key to blocking a defense bill Tuesday that included a repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.
In voting to oppose opening debate on the military bill, Cornyn suggested Democratic leaders were trying to score election-year points with gay rights and other liberal groups. But the Texas Republican has also refused to accede to a demand by Tony Perkins, the president of the socially conservative Family Research Council, to withdraw from tonight’s Log Cabin reception.
Last week, Perkins wrote to the Texas Senator that the Log Cabin Republicans had been instrumental in pushing legal challenges to bans on gay marriage and added that “it is deeply troubling to me that you would lend your credibility to this organization.”
Cornyn wrote back saying that while he disagreed with the gay rights group on some issues, he would still attend the Log Cabin reception, which is a fundraiser for the organization’s political action committee.
“First, part of my job is to reach out to those committed to defeat Senate Democrats this November,” Cornyn wrote. “Second, as social conservatives we affirm the basic dignity of every human life, including not only unborn children, but also adults with whom we may disagree. I believe we are all made in the image and likeness of God.”
Although Cornyn’s appearance at the Log Cabin event is noteworthy, tonight’s events mark Mehlman’s debut in the gay-rights arena, said Cooper, who added that the former GOP official would also be speaking by video to the Log Cabin dinner, even though Mehlman will actually be at the American Foundation for Equal Rights dinner in New York.
When he came out last month, Mehlman said he would fundraise to help the legal challenge to Proposition 8, the California measure banning gay marriage.
With tickets going for $5,000 a person and $10,000 a couple, the American Foundation for Equal Rights cocktail reception at New York’s Mandarin Oriental Hotel has a star-studded host roster. It includes big-time GOP donor and hedge fund manager Paul E. Singer and Peter Thiel, the gay California venture capitalist who supported Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) for president in 2008.
Former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman (R) and one-time Massachusetts Gov. William Weld (R), longtime gay rights supporters, are backing the effort.
Also on the list is Patton Boggs partner Benjamin Ginsberg, a former RNC counsel, and former Federal Election Commission Chairman Michael Toner, a Republican who is now an adviser with Bryan Cave Strategies.
Former Rep. Michael Huffington (R-Calif.), who is gay and the ex-husband of columnist and publisher Arianna Huffington, is also a host, as is former Bush communications adviser Nicolle Wallace and GOP consultant Tom Synhorst, who was an adviser to former Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.).
Other hosts include Israel Hernandez, a longtime aide to the Bush family; Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti lobbyist Bruce Mehlman, the brother of Ken Mehlman; and Margaret Hoover, who worked for the Bush campaign and is the great granddaughter of President Herbert Hoover. The event is being put together by Susan Ralston, who worked for Rove in the White House and for former lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The foundation’s president is Chad Griffin, a Democrat who worked with liberal Hollywood producer Rob Reiner.
Olson and Mehlman’s involvement, Griffin said, “has removed and lifted the partisan veil.”
They are insidious, and corrosive to the Republican Party.
What is it about Massachusetts? A supposed "Republican" gets elected - and he is no better/different from the turkey Dems that traditionally come from that place...
If a Republican is going to vote with the Dems - then how is that any better than a Dem getting the seat in the first place?
Just another casualty of the "got to elect Republicans at all cost" mantra...
Folks - learn the lesson - vote for a turd, you are gonna get a turd - regardless of what letter they randomly decide to place next to their name.
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