Why Harry Reid decided to move foward with DADT vote

By Greg Sargent

Earlier this afternoon, just before Harry Reid went onto the Senate floor and gave a speech calling for a vote on repeal of don't ask don't tell -- which has now failed -- he turned to a Senate aide and shrugged his shoulders.

"I have to go to the floor, but I'm not going to like giving this speech," he said, according to the aide.

Reid then went to the floor and called for an immediate vote on the defense authorization bill containing repeal, in the full knowledge that it was likely to go down. As Reid knew, he had not agreed to Susan Collins's demand for four days of debate time, giving several Republicans who support repeal an excuse to vote No, dooming the bill to fall short of 60 votes needed for passage, 57-40.

I have now spoken to a senior Senate aide and put together what happened and why Reid did this.

Reid concluded that even if Collins was sincere in her promise to vote for repeal if given the four days of debate, there was no way to prevent the proceedings from taking longer, the aide says. Reid decided that the cloture vote, the 30 hours of required post-cloture debate, and procedural tricks mounted by conservative Senators who adamantly oppose repeal would have dragged the process on far longer.

"It would have been much more than four days," the aide says. "Her suggestions were flat out unworkable given how the Senate really operates. You can talk about four days until the cows come home. That has very little meaning for Coburn and DeMint and others who have become very skilled at grinding this place to a halt."

After spending several hours thinking it over today and consulting with other members of the Dem caucus, Reid decided to push forward with the vote today, the aide says.

The aide rejected the claim that Reid should have extended the session another week in order to accomodate GOP procedural demands, as Joe Lieberman and others had asked, arguing that extended debate would actually have dragged the session into January, what with other things on the Senate to-do list.

"Why do we need to extend the session?" the aide asked. "Republicans have blocked this bill since February. We've made offer after offer to try to reach agreement on this. Going through those procedural motions along with the START treaty and tax cuts would have taken us until January 5th."

Some critics will point out that Reid decided he could pass on granting Republicans the extended floor debate they wanted and then shift the blame for killing repeal onto GOP obstructionism. After all, Collins did appear to want to vote for repeal, and her demands weren't all that unreasonable by historical standards. But the counterargument is that it would have been folly for Reid to trust other GOP moderates to vote Yes. After all, they (and Collins) had signed a letter vowing to block everything if the tax cut standoff wasn't resolved first.

Indeed, moderate GOPers like Scott Brown and Lisa Murkowsk, who had said they supported repeal, voted No. Also, Reid couldn't be certain conservative Senators wouldn't use the proceedings to foul up the Senate, with time running out on other major priorities.

Is this the end of the road? It's possible that repeal could be brought up again as a stand-alone bill, the aide tells me. But this is unlikely, the aide adds, because such a move would be ripe for all sorts of procedural shenanigans.

And there you have it.

UPDATE, 5:08 p.m.: Harry Reid will co-sponsor a free-standing DADT repeal bill to be introduced during the lame duck session by Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins, an aide confirms.

A second aide says the hope is that Scott Brown, Richard Lugar and Lisa Murkowski will then support it, as it would in theory be voted on after the tax issue is resolved.

