John McCain, a yesteryear relic,
has spontaneously combusted today:
The Senate has voted to move ahead on legislation that would overturn the military's 17-year-old ban on openly gay troops — a policy known as "don't ask, don't tell." The 63-33 vote all but guarantees the legislation will pass the Senate and reach President Barack Obama by year's end. Republicans had blocked previous votes on the bill on procedural grounds. But with a major tax bill finished and a Pentagon study released in favor of repealing the ban, several Republicans joined Democrats in supporting the bill. AP
The republicans who voted for repeal of DADT:
Scott Brown of Massachusetts, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, George Voinovich of Ohio, Mark Kirk of Illinois, plus Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe. More at Politico
I like this argument by Greg Sargent that the repeal of DADT will quiet liberals, but I don't buy it. The staunch left is looking for reasons to turn on Obama because ideology, above all else, comes first:
This is an important victory for the White House in another way. It will quiet all the talk about Obama's supposed "triangulating," because it demonstrates -- for the time being, anyway -- that even as the White House sees a need to trade away some core liberal priorities to compromise with Repubilcans, Obama seems to want to bring the left along with him, to whatever degree he can. This will make it tougher to argue that Obama's strategy is to deliberately alienate the left in order to win back the middle of the country. Plum Line
The DREAM Act, which should be a no-brainer, was blocked. This is another bill that would've passed if the democrats had their act together. All but five democrats voted for it; three republicans voted for it:
A measure that would have offered provisional legal status to some adults who came to America illegally as children failed to advance in a Senate vote Saturday.
Democratic backers of the legislation fell short of the 60 votes to move the DREAM Act legislation forward. Democratic Sens. Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Jon Tester of Montana, Max Baucus of Montana, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, and Ben Nelson of Nebraska voted against bringing the bill to the floor; Republican Sens. Richard Lugar, Lisa Murkowski, and Robert Bennett voted for it.
The vote was 55-41. First Read
