ADVOCATE: White House shut down DADT repeal in February at secret meeting

Bluebear

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Thu Apr-22-10 05:57 PM
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ADVOCATE: White House shut down DADT repeal in February at secret meeting

Edited on Thu Apr-22-10 06:02 PM by Bluebear

by Joe Sudbay

Kerry Eleveld has a blockbuster article tonight exposing what many of us have been hearing for quite awhile. Shortly after Obama told the nation in the State of the Union that he wanted to repeal DADT "this year," a meeting was held at the White House with gay "leaders" where Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina basically said it wasn't going to happen this year.

Yet just days after the January 27 speech, White House officials convened a meeting on February 1 with LGBT advocates in which they said the policy would not be included in the president�s recommendations for the Department of Defense authorization bill, according to multiple sources with direct knowledge of the meeting.

�It was a definitive shut-down from Messina,� said a source, who was present at the meeting and agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity, referring to White House deputy chief of staff. �He said it would not be going into the president�s Defense authorization budget proposal.� The news was a blow to activists since the Defense funding bill is the best legislative vehicle for including a measure to overturn the policy. �It almost seemed like the bar on the hurdle got raised two or three times higher,� said the source.

That was a huge blow. And, Messina would have been the one to deliver the blow. He's overseeing DADT strategy at the White House.

Even the Human Rights Campaign, which tried to downplay how devastating the Messina meeting really was, had to admit that right after the President promised in the State of the Union to repeal DADT this year, the White House began to back off the President's clear promise:
But the Human Rights Campaign�s David Smith, who also attended the meeting, recalls it differently.

�They were noncommittal about legislation in that meeting, but not definitively one way or the other,� said Smith, vice president of programs for HRC.
Non-committal only five days after the President was quite committal in his speech...

As we saw with health care reform, when the President dithered for a good year, the reform effort spun out of control and the entire thing was almost lost. When the President finally got engaged, finally put the full force of his presidency behind lobbying for the bill, suddenly the bill became law. It is flat out wrong, a lie, to suggest that the President has no power to influence legislation. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying to you, or has no concept whatsoever of how Washington works.

That is why even HRC had to finally admit that Gibbs' most recent statement was not helpful, and seemed to contradict the President's earlier promise to work with Congress to get the law repealed this year.

It's astounding how badly this White House has fucked over our community.

http://gay.americablog.com/2010/04/in-early-feb-white-house-backed-away.html