Many are saying: Messina is an impediment to getting Don't Ask, Don't Tell repealed this year
FRIDAY, APRIL 23, 2010
Gay Netroots spooks Deputy White House Chief of Staff Jim Messina
Joe and I have long suspected that the White House likes to use Atlantic journalist and blogger Marc Ambinder to push out their talking points whenever an issue has them particularly spooked. And today was no different. Ambinder has a piece uptoday defending Deputy White House Chief of Staff Jim Messina from criticism leveled by the gay blogosphere.A number of us have been saying for a while that Messina is an impediment to getting Don't Ask, Don't Tell repealed this year. And we're not basing it on conjecture. We're basing it on what he's been saying in private meetings with the top gay groups.
And apparently all the criticism from the gay Netroots has Messina spooked. So the White House is now using Ambinder to fight back.
In today's White House memo, Ambinder (who I do like) informs us that Messina isnt anti-gay at all. He's as pro-gay as they come! (Yes, I'm sure he has a toaster.) In fact, Messina is the guy who convinced the military to start the process to end the ban!!! Give me a break. Joe and I are up on the details of a number of the private meetings Messina has had with the gay groups, and he has hardly acted like the second coming of Harvey Milk. If anything, he's been a roadblock on Don't Ask, Don't Tell from the very beginning. He was loathe to discuss the issue when first meeting with the groups at the beginning of the administration, and he made quite clear in a now famous meeting earlier this year that he wasn't particularly excited about lifting the ban this year, even though, only five days before, his boss, the President of the United States, had promised in the State of the Union to lift the ban "this year."
And yes, as Ambinder notes, earlier this year Messina, when discussing the prospect of repealing DADT this year, as his boss promised in the SOTU, famously lectured the gay groups on the fact that we were a nation involved in two wars. You might recognized that talking point. It's one the Republicans use all the time to argue against repealing the ban. Here's House Minority Leader John Boehner channeling Messina:
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