So Joe Lieberman went on MSNBC and publicly stated that the Senate should move Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal first, before the new START treaty, or basically the Senate will run out of time to address both.
I believe, instead of going back to the START Treaty, we should go to the independent standalone repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Saturday night, we can get it done by Monday, maybe Tuesday at the latest, Tuesday morning, and then go back to START if they want.
This is about sequencing now. Lieberman says outright that the START treaty could get ratified next year, and there’s reason to suspect that he’s right. It got 66 votes on the motion to proceed yesterday, and with Evan Bayh not voting that makes 67. There will be five less Democrats in the chamber next year, bringing the baseline down to 62. But consider: Bob Corker and Johnny Isakson voted for new START in committee, but against the motion to proceed yesterday. Now, Bob Bennett and George Voinovich voted for the motion to proceed yesterday, and they won’t be back. Their replacements could, and probably will, end up voting No. But I could put together a target list of 5 more Republicans to vote for passage, starting with incoming Senator Dan Coats (who’s close to treaty champion Dick Lugar), and perhaps adding Orrin Hatch, Mark Kirk, and a handful of others. The whole START treaty is a proxy battle between Lugar and Jon Kyl, and so far Lugar has been winning out.
I don’t think you have to choose, really. There’s a plausible path to get both things done before the end of the year. If DADT repeal takes a couple days, then START can close things out. The biggest obstacle is figuring out how to fund the government, but that game of chicken could get done by Saturday, the deadline.
But nobody disagrees with the fact that DADT repeal would be dead in the next Congress. That’s not so clear-cut with START. So if you’re prioritizing, it seems to me that getting the one which has no other options, on a pure “points on the board” basis, would make the most sense.
Robert Gibbs today basically said that “there’s an effort to get (DADT repeal) done if we have time to do it.” That’s not as full-throated as any advocate would like to see. It’s pretty clear that the White House has prioritized START. They jumped down Jim DeMint’s throat yesterday for threatening to have the bill read aloud in a way that they’ve never done with opponents of DADT repeal.
More from Greg Sargent.
P.S. I’m preparing to be nauseated by the upcoming slate of revisionist stories about Joe Lieberman, if he helps pull this off. First, Lieberman was not the only supporter of repeal that could have worked with colleagues to get this done. Kirsten Gillibrand and Mark Udall have been with him every step of the way. Second, you can actually hold two things in your head at once. Joe Lieberman can be a good leader on repeal and also a worm.
