Sen. John Cornyn

Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn’s decision to accept an award from Log Cabin Republicans — the gay GOP group — in October was likely designed primarily to drum up votes and money in advance of the November mid-terms. And it may even have worked. But who knows, maybe we’ve also been a little too hard on our junior senator. Maybe, just maybe (but we doubt it), Cornyn is starting to warm up to the gays. And could you really blame him after Log Cabin sang “Happy Birthday” to his freakin’ wife?

Anyhow, we can’t seem to get a response from Cornyn’s spokesman, Kevin McLaughlin, about where he stands on standalone legislation to repeal “don’t ask don’t tell,” which is expected to come up for a vote in the Senate on Saturday. But we do know that Cornyn DID NOT VOTE last week when the Senate blocked a Defense Authorization bill that contained DADT repeal. McLaughlin won’t tell us why Cornyn didn’t vote or where he may have been (at the dentist?), and now we can’t help but wonder: Was he trying to avoid the issue? Does he have mixed feelings about DADT repeal? Is he even a potential yes vote on Saturday? Yeah, right.

Obviously Cornyn is aware of polls showing that nearly eight in 10 Americans support DADT repeal. And given recent polling numbers from Texas on other LGBT issues, we doubt support for repeal is much lower here, even though some might have you believe that.

A while back, McLaughlin issued a statement saying Cornyn felt there were more important priorities for the lame duck session than repealing DADT. Note that the statement didn’t say outright that Cornyn opposes repeal:

“There are a handful of time sensitive issues that must be addressed during lame duck,” the statement said. “A continuing resolution to fund the government, the medicare reimbursement rate also known as the ‘doc fix,’ and preventing every American from incurring a massive tax increase on the first of the year just to name a few. Sen. Cornyn believes these things should be the focus of the lame duck session.”

Two of the issues mentioned in Cornyn’s statement — Bush-era tax cuts and the “doc fix” — have now passed the Senate. Meanwhile, the omnibus spending bill containing government funding was abruptly pulled from the floor last night due to opposition over earmarks ($16 million worth of which were inserted by Cornyn). Now, the Senate is expected to vote today on a short-term resolution that would fund the government until Feb. 18.

In June, Cornyn said he didn’t believe the Senate should act on DADT repeal until the Pentagon study was complete. Then, after the study was released and showed strong support for DADT repeal, he issued the above statement. So, we’re just wondering, what will be his new excuse? At least his counterpart, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, has the guts to take a position and state it for the record.