We learned two things yesterday.
1) The Obama administration isn't worried about delaying the certification of the repeal of DADT, a necessary precursor to actually repealing the anti-gay law (first they certify, then we have to wait 60 days for the Republicans in Congress to gut the repeal effort legislatively). It's not entirely clear why they're not worried. The Republicans have already undermined the repeal in their defense bill. The hope is/was that the certification would happen in time to make the matter moot (i.e., if the bill is repealed before defense bil makes its way through the Senate, then it won't matter what kind of hate the GOP has put in the defense bill to muck up repeal, it will be moot at that point). But the longer the certification is dragged out, the better the chance the GOP has to mess with repeal on some key piece of legislation.
The Republicans would like nothing better than to tick the gays off against Obama, and undermining DADT repeal is a great way to do it, and they know it. The administration's certitude notwithstanding, I'd like to avoid a situation where the President is forced to veto, oh, say, the debt ceiling increase in order to save DADT repeal. Never underestimate the Republicans' ability to muck things up.
2) Alex Nicholson of Servicemembers United confirmed what many of us knew behind the scenes all along: that the initial plan was to repeal DADT in 2011, this year. Which would have gotten us nowhere since the GOP now controls the House. First the White House, then Nicholson's appropriate response:
Asked whether President Obama wants to see certification this month before Gates retires on June 30, Carney replied, “I think the process is moving at the pace that we anticipated and I also think that it’s the president’s policy and that it will be implemented regardless of who’s secretary of defense.”
“The pace that the administration originally anticipated for tackling the repeal legislation itself — that is, 2011 — turned out to be a serious miscalculation,” Nicholson said. “I certainly hope they have learned to appreciate both our good judgment on timing and the unanticipated consequences of delay.”If the WH had their druthers, we'd be dead in the water at this point. There is no reason to accept their know-it-all assurances as acceptable. Had we accepted their assurances before, we'd not even be here now.
