Last month, former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty (R) made waves when he suggested that he would reinstate the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy if elected President. This morning, Pawlenty went a step further, telling me that he would support rescinding the funds necessary for the Department of Defense to implement the repeal. Appearing at the Family Leader’s Presidential Lecture Series in Iowa, Pawlenty reiterated his argument for why the policy should not have been repealed and then, when pushed, agreed with me that taking away the funding “would be a reasonable step”:
PAWLENTY: We have to pay great deference, I think to those combat units, their sentiments and their leaders. That’s one of the reasons why I said we shouldn’t have repealed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and I would support reinstatement.
TP: And rescinding the funds for implementation, implementation of repeal?
PAWLENTY: That would be a reasonable step as well.
Watch it:
Interestingly, the idea to rescind funding has also been suggested by the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer, on whose radio show Pawlenty originally said he would like to bring back the DADT policy.
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