The Enablers...

Want to know why Barack Obama feels he can ignore LGBT issues without fear of repercussion?

Look no further than Marc Ambinder's latest attempt at putting lipstick on the pig, and Andrew Sullivan's latest attempt at putting lipstick on the pig of putting lipstick on the pig. Ambinder ends his post with this bit of nonsense:

Does Obama favor gay rights, and do his actions support those beliefs? Yes. Is there a conspiracy inside the West Wing to block progress? I've found no evidence that there is.

And Sullivan ends his with this:

He [Ambinder] predicts:

By this time next year, [DADT] will be gone. Gay people will be openly serving in the United States Armed Forces.

For this to happen the Congress would have to act. Would a possible Republican House vote down the Joint Chiefs' recommendation? You bet your bottom dollar they would. That's the worry. And it's a real one.

Which is also nonsense.

With regards to Ambinder: First, DADT will not be gone by this time next year. That's because Barack Obama has shown no interest in ending DADT. Oh sure, he's mouthed the appropriate words once - in January's the State of Union address - but that's not the same as actually pushing the end of DADT to the top of the legislative agenda. Second, as Ambinder clearly knows, ending DADT becomes more difficult - not less - with each passing day. That's because it is widely anticipated that Democrats will suffer substantial losses in the House, and possibly the Senate, come November. Any fool could have seen that the best time to tackle DADT was the first day after Obama was sworn in.

With regards to Sullivan: It's a true measure of his own intellectual dishonesty (as well as decay) that he could actually opine that the real danger to the end of DADT lies in a post-November (i.e., Republican) House of Representatives voting down legislation designed to end DADT. This is where Sullivan's desperate need to maintain his man-crush on Obama blinds him to the obvious: If ending DADT was really important to either Barack Obama or the Democratic leadership, there'd have been legislation on the floor of the House long ago.

But none of that really matters. Ambinder and Sullivan aren't interested in ending DADT enough to cross the line into apostasy. Oh sure, they'll make noises - timidly - now and then, just to make sure we all understand they really do want and end to DADT. But when push comes to shove, it's clear that neither thinks it important enough to suggest that extracting a political cost from Obama for his inaction is actually appropriate.

And that's why DADT is going not going away any time soon. It isn't Republicans, and it isn't cultural conservatives that are going to keep DADT in place, becasue they aren't the ones keeping it in place at the moment. It will be the unsympathetic opportunists in the Democratic Party (such as Barack Obama) and the enablers in the media (Ambinder) and the liberal gay political establishment (Sullivan) that will keep DADT alive and well. Just as they are doing now.

Comments

[Simon]

Andrew Sullivan - intellectual contortionist.

This post is a beauty -

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/04/the-real-insult-to-muslims.html

Comedy Central, rather than being craven hypocrites, are racists, who by censoring South Park, are demonstrating their hostility to Muslims.

[BillT]

Why is it that every time I see a snippet from Andy-boy, Judy Garland show tunes start running through my brain?

[Dennis the Peasant]

BillT-

Sounds Pavlovian.

[Coomanche Voter]

Atlantic magazine has long passed beyond parody. It would be a better value if it were printed on softer, non slick paper, with a convenient hole punched in the corner for hanging on a hook in the little place with a crescent moon cut in the door.

[TmjUtah]

RUUUUUUUBES.

[aelfheld]

Clearly this is Bush's fault.

[Dennis the Peasant]

That goes without saying.

[richard mcenroe]

The White House has already said DADT is off the table 'til after the 2010 election. What the HELL are these fools gassing about?

[richard mcenroe]

BillT -- cuz ya can't do Ethel Merman.

[Wm T Sherman]

A Limey fruit cares so much about policies in the U.S. military for what reason?

[JeffS]

'Cuz he's a Limey fruit, General Sherman. How else?

[Randy Rager]

The Republican Majority in the 2011 House of Representatives should introduce the Andrew Sullivan Bill, ending DADT the moment Andrew Sullivan has been deported.

[just passin by]

The Joint Chiefs aint goin for that shit. Nobody that actually serves (other then the few homosexuals that serve) wants DADT repealed. If The Messiah wants them in there openly, he'll have to do it on his own, and we've seen that he aint gonna do it either. Sorry pinkos, you lose again. Hold onto that health care sham you won, coz that's the last victory your gonna get from this assclown ;>

[jade]

The true friends of the gays are thoughtful conservatives like Dennis and his readers. If only Andrew, or "Fudgie", as Dennis refers to him, had the courage to realise this.

[Wm T Sherman]

Andrew's problem is not that he's gay. It's that he's an unprincipled whore with cognitive impairment and an unearned victim mentality.

Say, a whole lot of crap came out of Harvard, didn't it? Andrew Sullivan, the Unabomber, the engineers of the CRA/mortgage-securities/Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac debacle, the Obama, DOCTOR AMY BISHOP... and much much more.

How they do that? Although the cachet of a Harvard degree can get an ordinary scoundrel or douchebag in the door more easily, there's something more going on here. Something about the actual product they are turning out.

[scott]

These boobs are confused.

Doing away with DADT does nothing. Matter of fact, if anything, doing away with DADT makes things WORSE.

DADT is a POLICY (not a law) that merely says you may not separate a member from military service as long as they, for lack of a better term, stay in the closet and don't get public with their orientation.

The LAW it allows to basically go unenforced is 10 U.S.C. § 654.

So... if you do away with the POLICY that allows homosexual to serve as long as they basically keep it to themselves, what you have left is the LAW which says homosexual orientation, public knowledge or not,is incompatible with military service.

In other words... back to where we were before DADT, which is really nothing more than separating every homosexual regardless of whether they keep it to themselves or not.

[VoodooJock, USAF active duty]

Want to know why DADT really won't go away? It's ludicrously simple. Money. Last I heard, which was all of 2 picoseconds ago, liberals were still the majority in both the Capitol building and the White House. And it still galls the bejeezus out of liberals that they must dump money into the military instead of their own pet social engineering projects. And anyone who hasn't really thought clearly about it, meaning the majority in the mainstream media, thinks the whole DADT issue is about anything but funds.

Fact of the matter is, it's going to cost a ton of money to implement that policy. With the money the military must dole out to their retiree population (sound a lot like GM perhaps?) they can't afford it. With the money they must budget for unfunded liabilities like their defined benefit retirement program, they can't afford it. Then there's nagging details like replacing 25 year old attack aircraft, 50 year old tanker aircraft, 60 year old bomber aircraft, and that little ol' disturbance over in Southwest Asia. With all those problems facing just one branch of the military (yet of similar nature the sister services), DADT is pretty low on the priority list.

[Daran]

Of course the democrats are not interested in a repeal of DADT. Why kill the goose that lays the golden egg? 'Please donate now so we can oppose those evil weepublicans.'