After Stinging Losses, Obama Strongly Repeats ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Repeal Support

At his 1:00 PM press conference today, President Obama, responding to yesterday’s midterm election results, was asked a question about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” by CNN’s Ed Henry. The President repeated his support of its repeal, strongly.

The question is, how far is he willing to go, especially after yesterday’s results, to push through repeal? The other question is, with such a narrow majority in the Senate, can we even get it through?

Chris Geidner at MetroWeekly astutely notes,

“Obama returned to his and his administration’s general response to the issue, saying, “As commander-in-chief, I’ve said that making this change needs to be done in an orderly fashion … to make sure that we are looking at this in a systematic way that maintains good order and discipline, but that we need to change this policy.”

“He went on to note that the Pentagon working group is to complete its report on repeal implementation by Dec. 1. He said of the review’s release, “That will give us time to act, potentially, during the lame-duck session to change this policy.”

“Obama then talked about the court cases that exist challenging DADT, saying that having “this issue bouncing around in the courts” is not helpful for “good order and discipline and unit cohesion” because “the Pentagon and the chain of command doesn’t know at any given time what rules they’re working under.”

“He concluded with more strong language than he has used thus far in his comments on the end of the 1993 law and resulting policy, saying, “We need to provide certainty. And, it’s time for us to move this policy forward. And this should not be a partisan issue — this is an issue, as I said, where you’ve got a sizable portion of the American people squarely behind the notion that folks who are willing to serve on our behalf should be treated fairly and equally.”

Thanks to the good folks at GoodAsYou for the video!