COUNTING VOTES (AND IGNORING GOHMERT).... The floor of the U.S. House offered quite a debate yesterday on repealing the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, including some beautiful speeches from Democrats on the importance of respect and equality.

On the other end of the spectrum, there was Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas). Hoping to defend the status quo, the confused Texan insisted that "the military is inconsistent with American values," adding that other powerful nations throughout history moved "toward the end of their existence" when they allowed "homosexuality to be overt."

Soon after, Gohmert's colleagues ignored his hysterics and easily approved the freestanding repeal legislation.

The message from Reid's office wasn't subtle -- the Majority Leader supports the bill and wants it to pass, but if GOP supporters insist on yet another lengthy, time-killing debate, the repeal push will very likely fail again.

We'll probably learn more today about how the process is likely to shake out, but as of right now, there's reason for guarded optimism. Last week, repeal garnered 57 votes. Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) was at the dentist, but she'll be on hand for the next vote, and she'll support repeal. That's 58.

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) said she'd oppose repeal until after the vote on the tax deal, but now that the Senate has approved the policy, she announced yesterday she's a "yes" on this, too. That's 59.

To get over this last hurdle, proponents will need one more vote, which would likely come from a group of relative GOP moderates that includes Sens. Scott Brown (Mass.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Richard Lugar (Ind.), and George Voinovich (Ohio). To be clear, Dems don't need all four of them -- they just need one.

The question is what kind of demands we can expect. On the massive defense authorization bill, Brown and Murkowski wanted a lengthy debate with a lot of amendments, but there's no reason for them to make similar conditions on this bill -- it's a clean and simple repeal measure.

If these GOP senators support the change in policy, as they say they do, this should be a relatively painless success. If they make unreasonable demands about process, intended to run out the clock on the session, the last, best shot at repeal will suffer yet another heartbreaker.

I was/am very troubled by Amos' comments because he seems to have done a 180* in just a few days ~ given his comments, it was surprising to me that the House vote in favor of repeal was such a solid majority ~ but then we come to the Senate ~ and the John McCains ~ apparently the answer to my question in my prior post is a "NO", at least to some Rs ~