Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) has made the military’s Don’t ask, Don’t Tell policy a key part of his Republican presidential nomination. In December, the former governor told Bryan Fischer, an anti-gay radio host, that he “would support reinstating” the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy.
Yesterday, in an effort to show his allegiance to the Republican party and to gain further support, he told ThinkProgress’ Igor Volsky that he would rescind funds to implement the policy’s repeal. In his quest to win the Republican presidential nomination, he said the policy’s repeal would be “a reasonable step” that he would support.
Recently, Pawlenty refused to tell ThinkProgress as to whether or not gays should be allowed to serve in the military. Catch his interview with ThinkProgress below.
TP: You were in the news this week saying that you would like to reinstate, or if you were president you would reinstate Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Do you think gays should be allowed to serve in the military at all, or do you think it’s detrimental to unit cohesion?
PAWLENTY: I really defer to the military leaders to a large degree on this issue. I supported maintaining Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. The military civilian leaders came forward and said they think it’s time to revisit the issue and they took a survey of how the military rank-and-file felt about it, and a majority of the survey thought it would be okay to lift Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. However, the thing that gave me cause for concern which fueled my opposition to repealing it is when they did a survey of combat units and the members of the combat units and combat commanders, they didn’t support repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and they had specific reasons why as it related to possible effects within those combat units. So that’s the basis for my opposition for repealing it.
TP: So you would be comfortable with gays being able to serve in the military as long as they aren’t public with their orientation?
PAWLENTY: I really would defer to the military leaders and military more broadly. We rely on these men and women to do extremely difficult things in extremely difficult circumstances, and I think the leadership of the military is genuinely trying to evaluate this issue on the impact of men and women in uniform, but as it relates to the combat units and combat leaders, they still have it seems a significant concern and I’m not comfortable just ignoring and pushing aside that concern.
A poll taken last December revealed that Americans don’t support the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy. Data showed that 77 percent of Americans wanted the policy ended for good. Despite overwhelming public support for gays to serve openly in the military, Pawlenty still wants to ban gays from openly serving their country. He won’t say whether or not gays should even be allowed to serve in American armed forces at all.
