The ends justify the means...  I've been over at Facebook reading various friends' comments on the failure of the so-called Democratically-controlled Senate to gather 60 votes to allow the defense policy bill -- containing a conditional repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy -- to proceed to a vote on the floor of the Senate.  Every Republican Senator except one voted against the vote.  (The one was Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who didn't vote at all.)  And three Democratic Senators voted against the vote:  both Senators from Arkansas, including Blanche Lincoln, who faced a stiff challenge in the primaries and looks set to be in a brutal fight against her Republican opponent.  And Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, who brought the bill to the floor expecting a vote to proceed.

Reid can be excused for his vote.  He wants to bring the bill back during the lame duck session of Congress post-elections, and can do so only if he voted with the majority when the bill was defeated.  It's a political maneuver only, based on the Senate's own rules, to keep the bill alive until the new Congress can be sworn in.

The Democrats -- the original gang that couldn't shoot straight -- went down by four votes.  Three were from their own party, which shows that party discipline is a joke among this particular party.  But they needed just one Republican to go along with all the Democrats, and they couldn't convince any of them.  This in a country where a majority of its citizens, from all parts of the political spectrum, support repeal of this policy.  The Democrats just couldn't get their act together.

Well, you may ask, what about all those nasty, vote-in-lock-step Republicans?  Quite a few of them have supported repeal in the past; why didn't they vote to allow this bill to go to the floor?  Judging from the reported comments, there were two big complaint.  One is that this bill -- which hasn't been prevented from going to a vote in over 40 years -- contained too many non-financial provisions.  Like the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell".  And the REACH program, designed to get fast-track citizenship for certain illegal aliens who meet specific criteria.

And the other big complaint?  That the bill was being rammed through, with the Republicans not being given sufficient chance to add amendments of their own before any vote would be taken.

I don't know how true or accurate either of these complaints are.  But the fact is that Republican supporters of repeal, who are not ones to give much heed to the more reactionary members of their party on this issue, voted against letting the bill come to a floor vote.  And they are the ones using these complaints as reasons.

So:  bad enough the Democrats have, once again where GLBT rights are concerned, shown weakness and cowardice in place of strength and boldness.  Bad enough the Republicans have felt, rightly or wrongly, that they're being railroaded into voting for something of which they do not approve, and about which they feel they've had no hand in crafting.

But I've got to point my finger, also, at all those who believed two things.

First, that the best way to get social legislation passed is to tack it onto a bill, any bill, used to fund any major part of government -- whether the legislation is related to the bill's main purpose or not.  This time, it was a bill giving (among other things) long-needed pay raises to servicemen and servicewomen.  And at least it was a military policy change tacked onto a military funding bill.  This is, boiled down to its essence, the old policy that "the end justifies the means".  Doesn't matter how you get something done, as long as that something is "for the greater good".  But really, people -- didn't your mothers teach you better?

Second, that you could get away with number one above by tacking it to a bill involved with funding a vital governmental function.  Because no one in their right mind would vote against a funding bill, would they?  No one would vote against pay raised for enlisted men and women, right?  Against funding the continuing operation in Afghanistan and Pakistan?  Against keeping the search for Osama Bin Laden alive and active, right?

Well, the bluff has been called.   And now there is no Plan B; and the sounds of  the weeping and the gnashing of teeth are heard throughout the land.

Forgive me if I don't join in.