Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has been all over the map on whether Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell should be repealed. In 2006, he said he would defer to military leaders, but when military leaders said it should be repealed, he said there should be a Pentagon study. Now that the Pentagon released its report, finding that DADT can be repealed in a way that won’t hurt the military, a grumpy McCain is inventing new reasons to oppose repeal. Last night on CNN, host Anderson Cooper asked McCain’s good friend Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) — a lead sponsor of repealing DADT — if McCain is “moving the goalpost”:
COOPER: Has he been moving the goalpost here?
LIEBERMAN: Well, I — John is my good friend, but I disagree with him on this. And the tapes you played suggest changing standards here. I mean, in my opinion —
COOPER: So you do think that he’s changed his standings, that he’s moved the goalpost.
LIEBERMAN: I think the question that John raised today has been answered in this survey. Two-thirds of the American military, a little more than that, say that they don’t think repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell” will have any effect on military effectiveness, and most importantly, 92 percent of the American military who feel that they have served with somebody gay or lesbian in their own unit say that it has simply not been a problem.
Watch it:
Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart last night also observed that McCain keeps moving the goalpost on DADT, comparing the Arizona senator to the Black Knight from Monty Python’s “The Holy Grail.”