Enough Senators couldn't overcome their old prejudices: "don't ask, don't tell" is still official policy. According to the tally, John McCain was in bad company as thirty-eight of his fellow Republicans and one Democrat also voted against cloture, preventing the bill to repeal the ban from moving forward and effectively killing it.
Sixty votes were needed to invoke cloture. If you're counting, you might have noticed that only forty senators voted no, and wonder why that doesn't mean there were sixty "yes" votes. The answer is that three senators did not vote: Sam Brownback (R-KS), John Cornyn (R-TX) and Blanche Lincoln (D-AR). I'll hazard a guess that neither Republican was going to vote in the affirmative, so their faliure to vote had no effect.
Though McCain was hardly the only one to vote against advancing the repeal, he's the one who should be forced to explain, as often as possible, why he went back on his word. He said he'd support repeal if the military leadership recommended it; they did. He said he wanted a study done on the effects of repealing the ban; the study was presented to President Obama on 1 December and it concluded that repealing the ban would not materially harm the military's effectiveness. You're out of excuses, Senator.
Oh, I know: you're going to hide behind Susan Collins' denunciation of Harry Reid for calling the vote before Republicans had finished negotiating procedural niceties. You'll bob and weave and generally do everything in your power to keep yourself from looking like what you are. I'll refrain from using the word.
Actually, no, you're not that word. You're a foolish, frightened old man who has forgotten why he holds a Senate seat. You have no principled reason for your stance, but you cling to it anyway because you don't have the courage to admit you're wrong. In this you are like your fellow Senators who voted no, except you said you would be different.
Senator, it gets worse. And you will deserve every bad moment.
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