Over at National Review Online, Jonah Goldberg is counseling the Right not to take the bait on Obama’s promise finally to start the process of repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell,” with a piece entitled, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Don’t Bite“:
I’m basically with Amy Holmes and Jim Geraghty on this one. Conservatives shouldn’t take Obama’s bait on repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. The Left seems entirely underwhelmed and unpersuaded by Obama’s rhetorical pandering. I’m not saying he doesn’t believe it should be repealed. But no one seems to think Obama will do anything to achieve this supposed goal. Democrats certainly aren’t going to push it in an election year when they’re supposed to be concentrating on jobs and tacking back to the center.
So why did Obama even throw it out there? Beyond the obvious desire to shore-up his left flank, I can’t help but wonder if — as Amy suggests — this is a deliberate wedge issue. It’s not aimed at voters, but at conservative talk radio and similar sectors of the Right. Obama wants to win back independents.
Jonah, I think Obama is telling gays, “Bite me!”
The prominent people who support the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” are on the Right — Dick Cheney, Gen. Colin Powell (ret.), Gen. John Shalikashvili (ret.) — so I really don’t see the Right getting very stirred up against people volunteering to serve their country in the armed forces, especially in a time of war. Also, if the armed forces are able to figure out how to allow Muslims to serve — people whose religion commands them to kill unbelievers and to fight enemies of Islam, which would be their fellow soldiers — then I’m pretty sure they are able to allow gays and lesbians to serve openly, as long as they behave according to the same rules of propriety that apply to straight soldiers.
Obama does not play games he hasn’t rigged. The base he will never betray — the anti-gay black religious Left*, Muslims and illegal aliens — is comprised of groups that are nation-building: morality is just their cover story for destroying people who are not on board with making babies for them. However, homosexuals have gotten unpleasantly uppity lately. Very nearly a critical mass of them have realized that the Left NEVER intends to keep its promises to them of equality. After all, if it did, then Obama would have gotten busy on the task even before giving the first interview of his presidency to Muslims and declaring that he would empty Gitmo and give foreign Muslim terrorists the same rights as American citizens — and MORE rights than homosexual American citizens have.
So I think Obama has rigged a crushing defeat for any attempt to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and his homosexual patsies on the Left — I’m talking to YOU, Human Rights Campaign! — don’t see this betrayal coming. I don’t think even the uppity gay and lesbian bloggers — Pam, Joe, John and Towleroad — who have been generating real pain to Obama and the Democrats with their calls for gays to stop working for and donating to Democrats until they have enacted laws for homosexual equality see this betrayal looming. But this is classic Obama — make big promises and get homosexuals hopeful and gushing cash, then a few days or weeks later, crush them with actions that are the opposite of what was promised. Demonize the Right and repeat. A devastating defeat of an effort to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell” will cow homosexuals about calling for the Democratic majority of Congress to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and generally shut them up all round.
I also think Obama is counting on an outcry from the Right in favor of “don’t ask, don’t tell” to give cover to the bigotry of the Left. In that respect, Jonah is correct to tell the Right, “don’t bite.”
Update, February 1, 2010, Mon.: Thank you, Instapundit, for the link to this post on Obama’s SOTU promise to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell,” and welcome, Instapundit readers! I share Instapundit’s post with Jennifer Rubin, who suggests that Obama intends to disappear the issue of repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” into the fog of the indefinite future in her post at Commentary, “Don’t Ask When, Don’t Tell the Left They’ve Been Conned.”
Also, here’s a bonus explanation from Hill Buzz about why I am scolding the Human Rights Campaign, from Oct. 13, 2009:
BUT, if these Human Rights Campaign volunteers approach US, and engage US, and ask US to support them, then we let them know, politely, just what we think of these idiots. Which sounds something like this:
“We will never again support the Human Rights Campaign, and on a regular basis tell everyone we know not to support you either, because from June to November 2008 you gave every cent donated to you to the Obama campaign. Clearly, you do not need money if you can so freely give it away. Clearly, you can’t be trusted with money if you lavish it on someone who has no intention of doing anything for the LGBTQ community. Do you know what Obama did on June 29th, 2008 instead of marching in the Chicago Gay Pride Parade? He got his hair cut and played basketball at the East Bank Club. He has done absolutely nothing for the LGBTQ community and pays only vague lip service to DADT and DOMA issues. He is not supporting marriage equality in Maine and Vermont…and he did not instruct his followers to defeat Prop-8 in California, which passed because of the enthusiastic support of black Obama voters. Joe Solomonese and the Human Rights Campaign will never again have our support because they put all their hopes into the world’s largest do-nothing narcissist. You should be ashamed to be out supporting an organization that is clearly so stupid and shortsighted.”
*Over at Hot Air late on Jan. 31, Slublog ponders, “Obama religious supporters jumping ship?,” and concludes:
It seems to me that religious leaders aren’t moving away from Obama because they’re disappointed with his actions as president, but because they are tired of being used by a man who is no longer interested in their input.
Update, Feb. 1, 2010, Mon.: Thank you, Prof. William Jacobson, of Legal Insurrection, for linking this post in your post explaining to the Left how it’s always donate-today-for-jam-tomorrow when it comes to Obama’s promises to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell”:
Obama did not say DADT would be repealed this year. He said that “this year” he would “work with Congress and our military ….” The professor-in-chief sure knows how to pen a sentence.
(snip)
[Gay Lefties:] Please check your in-boxes, there are e-mails from the DNC and Organizing for America seeking donations “this year.”
And for donations, the DNC and OFA really mean this year, as in 2010, as in give them your credit card number right now to make sure they get your money this year. What do you not understand about this year?
Right On the Money, So true.
Jonah also wrote a book that claims that liberals are fascists. Of course we all know that America defeated the Axis under the leadership of President Alf Landon and Secretary of State Charles Lindbergh.
Joe in SF,
You should read Jonah Goldgerg’s book, Liberal Fascism, before mocking it. I didn’t understand the thought police and totalitarianism of the Left until I moved over to the Right. The Left is comprised of people who consciously want to destroy capitalism, usually because it shames them, and the idealists they have persuaded wrongly that their cause of robbing people of their self-reliance and making them dependent on an all-controlling government are good things. This is like George Orwell’s Animal Farm, where the destroyers of capitalism are the more equal animals who live in the house, while the idealistic animals work themselves to death for the farm/state and live in the barn.
Certainly there are totalitarians on the Right — the social conservatives who wish to enact the tenets of their religions into law and to use the schools to proselytize for them by teaching the religious doctrine of Intelligent Design. But the Right also is comprised of fiscal conservatives and libertarians. And overall, I’ve found people on the Right significantly more respectful of beliefs they disagree with than I ever experienced on the Left.
It is the Left’s intolerance of beliefs other than their own and their insistence that the government control every aspect of individual life that makes the Left deserve to be called “Liberal Fascists.” Jonah Goldberg’s book lays out the history and evolution of this phenomenon and how the Left has appropriated the nomenclature of the Right and liberty as a mask for its totalitarian nature.
Cynthia
It’s not just Barry O. dear, it’s Donks in general. Did you see where the legislature in Hawaii shot down the civil union bill? Overwhelmingly Democrat that legislature, too.
Funny how when the slightly dem legislature of Alaska voted to cut off state benifits to those Alaska state workers in civil unions, that notorious Christianist Republican and evil right wing Governor they had then vetoed that bill. What was her name? Malin or something, can’t remember as I try to put the names of those enemies of freedom and joy out of my mind, knowing that Democrats will save me.
Yes. This can pretty much be explained if you realize Obama is most likely himself a Muslim, in which case…
Gay liberals got fooled.
Do you really consider Generals Powell and Shalikashvili to be “on the Right”?
I did not know Alf Landon was gay.
The things you learn, from San Franciscans.
joe …
you really should read more than a books cover before you make such ignorant statements …
The MSM thinks Powell is on the right … Obama certainly did …
gee maybe Cheney is a closet liberal …
.-= Jeff´s last blog ..Obama’s Unclenched Fist =-.
Yayyyy Cynthia! As a heterosexual conservative white male who served in the army (2 score years ago) with gays, who has had brother’s in law who were gay I have absolutely no problem with civil unions or gays in the military… I do have a big problem with the continuing efforts on the left to keep their “base” down on the farm so to speak. I wonder when blacks, gays, Hispanics and poor folk will wise up about that? Again, yayyyy, Cynthia!
.-= GM Roper´s last blog ..Radical Islam In America =-.
Really awesome post. But I do have a problem with one line “Obama does not play games he hasn’t rigged. ”
The world is a complex game of chess, and Obama can’t win at a rigged game of Shoots and Ladders. Every game Obama plays (Olympics, Copenhagen, closing Gitmo, cap and trade, terror trials in NY, healthcare, VA, NJ, MA) he falls flat on his face.
Obama is in direct competition to top the historic record of the 2008 Detroit Lions.
We’re absolutely right not to bite on this. The thing I see is Obama expecting the right to act like he believes they are. We’re supposed to be gay-hating bigoted bastards… so obviously waving the rainbow flag in our faces will get us all lathered up and ready to show our bigotry to the progressive donors abandoning his party and the independents who like Republican policies but aren’t so comfortable with rightwing intolerance.
Don’t believe the hype, and don’t reflexively attack Obama on everything… this time, it’s a trap.
Just walk away… DADT will never be ended by this administration, and offering the President any excuse to avoid it is equal to helping him in 2012. As a conservative, you could do less damage donating to his campaign!
Interesting analysis. Probably true. Obama has a certain disdain for gays that he attempts to hide while he is using them politically. It may be a holdover from his Muslim days.
He panders to the polls. Whichever one is more popular at the moment.
this sham is just a rerun of the clinton-era ‘agonizing’ over the issue.
there are thousands of gay folks in the military right this moment.
it doesn’t need to take years to end dadt… just stop throwing people out who are gay … done !
Let’s face it– Obama’s allegiance to Islam, whatever level or form it takes, is UTTERLY incompatible with any true sympathy for or promotion of gays or their issues.
Islamists KILL gays. In America and the west, most people accept it, perhaps more reluctantly as it grows more strident and shrill in public policy alteration. But in Islam it is proscribed and violence against it is the norm, NOT going to change anytime soon.
Recent pictures from Iran showing young gay men swinging from portable gallows only reinforces my point. It is the Iranian GOVERNMENT doing this. ISLAMIC government.
The truth is, gays are a very small percentage of any population, and in spite of support for them coming from the monied far left, are generally going to fail to gain a majority in political issue elections.
Gays are not the constituency of the future for any leftward pol. It is the satanic blend of secular leftists/Marxists and anti-liberty Islamists who will make up the largest dependable number of voters and volunteers.
And if some of them are, shall we say, less than sympathetic to gay issues, well these are the breaks.
Check out LOG CABIN REPUBLICANS.
Cynthia, I think an important factor in Pres. Obama’s foot dragging is that once DADT is history it disappears as an “issue” for the Democrats. So much of Democrat support is centered around those who support their “issues,” so they see DADT as a hook they can use to bolster their 90% support among gays.
.-= submandave´s last blog ..One more red nightmare =-.
Here’s my thoughts, from a Marine that served in the 1970s/1980s. I think Pr. Obama has his own agenda here, but I want to surprise him on this one.
http://randomactsofpatriotism.blogspot.com/2010/02/psst-heres-secret.html
.-= ASM826´s last blog ..Snowmaggedon =-.
ASM826,
I recommend my dear gentle readers read the post linked in your comment — it brought tears to my eyes. It also is helpful to have insights on “don’t ask, don’t tell” from people who have served with gays.
Thank you.
Cynthia