Updated 5:49 p.m.<\/sup><\/div>\n Efforts to repeal the military’s "don’t ask, don’t tell" suffered a near-fatal blow on Tuesday as senators fell short of earning the 60 votes necessary to start debate on the annual defense policy bill by a vote of 56 to 43. Tuesday’s vote does not end efforts to lift the military’s 17-year ban on gays serving openly in uniform, but makes it almost impossible to ensure a repeal is included in the final House-Senate compromise version of the defense bill that lawmakers may vote on during a lame-duck session after November’s midterm elections.<\/p>\n
The vote’s fate was sealed early Tuesday, when Sen. Susan Collins<\/strong> (R-Maine), who supports repealing "don’t ask," said she disagreed with Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid<\/strong>‘s decision to restrict the number of amendments to the bill. "For the life of me, I do not understand why the majority leader does not bring this bill to the floor and allow free and open debate and amendments from both sides of the aisle," Collins told reporters. Vice President Biden spoke with Collins on Tuesday to appeal for her support, according to administration officials. Biden has been lobbying senators on behalf of the legislation since the bill was in committee, and his call Tuesday marked a final push to secure a single Senate Republican vote… <\/p>\nSen.
John McCain<\/strong> blasted those plans, calling them, "a blatant and cynical attempt to galvanize the Hispanic vote in the case of the DREAM Act and to also energize the gay and lesbian vote in the case of ‘don’t ask, don’ t tell.’" Sen. Lindsey Graham<\/strong> (R-S.C.) agreed: "This is just transparent, brazen, let’s check special interests bloc politics forty-something days before an election"…<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\nReading what Senators
Susan Collins<\/font><\/strong>, John McCain<\/font><\/strong>, Lindsey Graham<\/font><\/strong>, and even Harry Reid<\/font><\/strong>, had to say leaves me cold. It’s all about political jockeying for power in the upcoming elections. All the Republicans and two Democrats voted against cloture. While I know that the Bill may still be alive, that’s not the point. The point is that the vote wasn’t on repealing the "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy. It was on something else – I’m not totally sure what – making Obama look bad, pissing off Gays and Latinos in hopes of keeping them from voting, pleasing those same groups to win their votes, giving credence to the anti-Gay forces to get them to vote. Who even knows? I don’t, and I doubt that any of these things really matter anyway. The Senate vote was called "a blatant and cynical attempt …<\/em>" and "transparent, brazen, let’s check special interests bloc politics …<\/em>" instead of about rights for Homosexual Soldiers. Our 111th Congress has forgotten what it’s in Washington to do…<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Senate fails in attempt to repeal ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ Washington Post by Ed O’Keefe September 21, 2010 Updated 5:49 p.m. Efforts to repeal the military’s "don’t ask, don’t tell" suffered a near-fatal blow on Tuesday as senators fell short of earning the 60 votes necessary to start debate on the annual defense policy bill […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4360\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}