I expect the Republican House to try repealing DADT

[jmowreader]

except not in the way we would do it.

It should come as no surprise that Republicans hate the idea of gay people in the military. They only settled on DADT in the first place because they had to come up with some sort of a compromise between Clinton's default position--he walked into the White House planning to rescind the ban on gays in the military--and the Republicans' default position, which is to seek them out and throw them out, preferably with a dishonorable discharge (which can only be handed down as the result of a general court martial, therefore declaring homosexuality to be a crime on the same level as rape or murder).

I seriously think the GOP majority is going to try to reinstate the Reagan-era antigay witch hunts. This will do two things: solidify their position with their base, and lock up Congress for the next two years. After all, if you're debating the ever-pressing, extremely urgent need to get all the gay people out of the army, how can you possibly find time to fix the economy? These bills will be DOA in the Senate, but the GOP will use them in the 2012 campaign: "If the Democratic Senate would have passed our simple, commonsense ban on gays in the military, a ban the American people are demanding, we could have fixed the economy, created jobs and solved the illegal immigration problem, but the stonewalling DemocRATs wouldn't budge on our simple request. So, send us a Republican Senate and a Republican president and we can fix everything just so nice and shiney!"