Solomonic Democrats

OPINION:

Few noticed last week when, during the Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas, the three leading candidates bolted from left-liberal orthodoxy with a pledge to enforce the Solomon Amendment.

“There’s a federal statute on the books which says that, if a college or university does not provide space for military recruiters orprovide a ROTC program for its students, it can lose its federal funding,” explained NBC’s Tim Russert as Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards listened. “Will you vigorously enforce that statute?” Mr. Russert didn’t mention “Don’t ask, don’t tell” (the chief reason the Solomon Amendment exists) or campus nondiscrimination policies.

Incredibly, all three candidates said they would enforce the Solomon Amendment. Each has a record of support for the policy of forcing the military to accept homosexuals. None has been known to call on schools to accept the military, until now.

As long ago as 1999, First Lady Hillary Clinton broke publicly with her husband’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, calling it a “political compromise” that “has not worked.” Now listen: “You know, I think that the young men and women who voluntarily join our all-volunteer military are among the best ofour country. I want to do everything I can, as president, to make sure that they get the resources and the help that they deserve.”

When Mr. Russert got more specific, she did not budge. “Of the top 10 rated schools, Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Stanford, they do not have ROTC programs on campus. Should they?” he asked. ” Well, there are ways they can work out fulfilling that obligation,” Mrs. Clinton said. “But they should certainly not do anything that either undermines or disrespects” service members.

Mr. Obama, for his part, said “yes” immediately before launching into safer territory including the disproportionate military burden of rural communities and better veterans’ health care. Like Mrs. Clinton, he did not mention that he is best known as a supporter of homosexuals in the military and isn’t generally known to seek a campus more accepting of the military.

Mr. Edwards repeated much the same words as the other two Democrats, adding an item about the importance of caring for veterans diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Each candidate left the impression that he or she would seriously enforce the law. In practice, that might seem unlikely, given how beholden the Democratic Party is to its left-liberal activist base. But the terms of this debate changed after the March 2006 Supreme Court decision in FAIR v. Rumsfeld, which rejected universities’ objections to the Solomon Amendment. The years 2008 or 2009 may prove an excellent time for schools that bar ROTC to reinstate it before Washington forces them to.