Senate confirmation hearings have begun for Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s pick for Defense Secretary, and the former lawmaker insists he’ll make ensuring equal treatment for all service members a “high priority.”
Responding to an inquiry from Sen. Mark Udall (D-O), Hagel said he supports the policy to allow military chaplains to perform same-sex ceremonies in states where they are legal. “All men and women deserve the same rights.”
Opposition to Hagel from Big Gay seems to be abating as he doubles down on his promise that he’s evolved from 1998, when he criticized the nomination of Ambassador James Hormel because Hormel was “aggressively gay.”
Use Your Mandate, a mysterious LGBT group still focusing on blocking the Hagel confirmation, has been questioned for its ties to Republican Party. Reports the New York Times:
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Portraying itself as a gay rights group, [Use Your Mandate] has sent mailers to voters in seven states — including New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Montana — and run television ads against Mr. Hagel in New York and Washington. It has sent out posts on Twitter questioning his gay rights record and asking, “Is this what we worked so hard for?”
Established gay rights activists have expressed skepticism about the group’s authenticity. It has no Web site and it only lists as its address a post office box in New York. But paperwork filed with the Federal Communications Commission link it back to Tusk Strategies, a bipartisan political group founded by Bradley Tusk, a former strategist for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York.
In an interview, Mr. Tusk would only identify its financiers as Democratic “gay and L.G.B.T. people who have been active in campaigns around the country.”
Yet federal records show that Use Your Mandate uses Del Cielo Media, an arm of one of the most prominent Republican ad-buying firms in the country, Smart Media, with clients that have included the presidential campaigns of former Gov. Jon M. Huntsman Jr. of Utah and Senator John McCain of Arizona; the 2010 Senate campaign of Christine O’Donnell, who was known for positions against homosexuality, in Delaware; and, as it happens, the Emergency Committee for Israel.
Boy, those Republicans will get into bed with anyone won’t they?
2eo
Just a quick update.
These links were confirmed about two hours ago. Use Your Mandate is a group entirely made up of Republican satellite donators.
Cam
The Tea Partiers and Right wingers in the GOP who hate Hagel first tried to pay off Log Cabin to attack Hagel on his gay rights history, they gave them money for a HUGE ad buy in the NYTimes with no doubt a kickback going to the group itself.
When everybody called out Log Cabin on it’s hypocricy for attacking Hagel and yet endorsing people who were far more anti-gay the right wingers backtracked and are now trying to invent a group that “Calims” to be a gay group, but it’s one nobody has ever heard of before and yet has tons of money.
The fact that the right wingers and the Tea Partiers hate Hagel is actually making me think he would be better than I origionally thought.
2eo
@Cam: Actually, it’s a massive step for our community.
These lunatics are having to masquerade as us to make themselves seem credible, they are dissolving their own credibility and are resorting to utter charlatanism like all failing and morally wrong ideas.
It’s gratifying that they themselves see our community as credible and as worthwhile that they copy us. When it is NOT reciprocated even slightly, we couldn’t give a fuck about their bigotry.
If one of these horrible Anti-Democracy parasites was run over, I would start a fund for the repairs of the car before I would ring an ambulance.
Kieran
It’s official. Today’s republican party is the party of right-wing, war-mongering, neo-con nuts who absolutely DESPISE republicans like Chuck Hagel who are moderate and anti-War.
Charli Girl
@2eo:
Bahahahaha….”repair the car”!!! I love it!!
Yeah the repugs are trying everything they can. The interview with Mc Gerbil,and Madame Graham was UGLY!
Mc Gerbil (doesn’t it look like he has hamster or gerbil cheeks)tried that with Hillary and she KICKED his old ass!
jack512
Hagel will make an excellent Sec of Defense. He saw war first hand as a grunt who got wounded in the Vietnam war. Unlike the NeoCon Conservative Republicans who just love wars, as long as they don’t actually have to put their own lives on the line, Hagel hates wars. He sees them as a last resort situation. The Obama-Kerry-Hagel team will be a good anti-dote to the right wing pressures to get involved in needless foreign interventions.