Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), who has emerged as the Senate’s pointman on ending the military’s ban on openly gay servicemembers, told reporters today that he’s “very optimistic” repeal will be voted into law as soon as this weekend.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has scheduled a cloture vote on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal for tomorrow morning. Lieberman said today he’s “confident” he has the 60 votes (and then some) necessary to get cloture on the DADT repeal bill and move it to a final vote.
But Lieberman — who would only confirm Republican yes votes from Sens. Lisa Murkowski (AK) and Susan Collins (ME) — is not popping the champagne corks yet.
“We know that it ain’t over till it’s over,” Lieberman said, “and until all the votes are counted.”
Lieberman said he’s still pushing repeal on cautious Republican Senators, and he raised expectations that those efforts will pay off.
“I continue to believe that we’re going to end up with more support on the Republican side than the four that we’ve talked about,” he said, referring to Murkowski and Collins as well as Sens. Scott Brown (R-MA) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME).
Brown, Murkowski and Collins have signaled they’ll vote for cloture on repeal despite the fact that Reid has put the vote forward before the vote on the short-term Continuing Resolution that will serve in place of the spending bill the Democrats wanted. The vote schedule means that, in theory at least, the Republicans will be violating their pledge to stop any vote on any legislation before the Bush tax cuts and the spending measure was dealt with. Snowe has not yet said publicly if she’s willing to go along with the other Republican DADT repeal supporters and vote for cloture before the spending bill is voted on.
I asked Lieberman about Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND), who has emerged today as a possible no vote on DADT repeal. Lieberman confirmed he’s been talking to Conrad, and declined to say if he’s committed to voting for cloture.
“Let’s just say I’m confident that we have more than 60 votes,” Lieberman said.
Lieberman was asked if what he saw as “the biggest obstacle” to repeal at this point. The Senator said that from where he’s sitting it looks like smooth sailing.
“This has been so much debated,” Lieberman said. “And, honestly, the four Republicans who said they’d step out to support Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell have shown some courage and I just don’t think it’s going to be credible for anybody to say, for a technical, procedural reason, ‘even though I support the principle, I’m not going to vote [for the bill.]'”
“Right now, we’re on a very encouraging path,” Lieberman said.
