Last Call

With the House passing a stand-alone version of DADT repeal today, it's now up to Senate Republican moderates to toy with America before voting as homophobic assholes again make up for their failure earlier in the week and be attention whores for a couple news cycles discuss their support for the measure, which in theory only needs one more vote to pass a filibuster.  Naturally all eyes are on the Snowe Queen.

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) pledged her support for the standalone bill to repeal the military's Don't Ask Don't Tell policy this afternoon. Cloture to pass a repeal as part of the defense authorization failed by a mere 3 votes last week.

Snowe was among several theoretical supporters of repeal who said she voted against cloture because of procedural issues: Sens. Scott Brown (R-MA) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) objected to the time allotted to debate the underlying bill; and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) said that the timing for repeal was, in his view, not quite right.

Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) said, on the other hand, that she'd missed the vote because of a dental appointment. So, with Snowe's support, repeal supporters are within 1 vote of cloture -- and a repeal of DADT.

Who knows what Joe Manchin will do.  As Booman reminds us, he's not exactly on the side of actual Democrats.