At last Saturday’s GOP presidential debate, several Republican candidates expressed openness to having women register with the Selective Service after the Army and Marine Corps chiefs said that the U.S. should make such a move, much to the dismay of the Religious Right.
Yesterday, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins spoke with ex-Rep. Michele Bachmann, both of whom were stunned that Republican leaders would get behind the policy change, which they said would be disastrous for the military.
Perkins kicked things off by warning that “there is a very good likelihood that we could see the draft” in the near future because “the policies of this administration” have weakened the military and “made the world a very dangerous place.” (Back in 2010, Perkins said that “the president’s drive to repeal the ban on open homosexuality in the military” could “bring back the draft.”)
Bachmann said she was “shocked” by the candidates’ remarks in the debate, saying that “it’s crazy.”
“This is a radical idea,” she said. “It’s a darling of the left that’s been put forward actually for several decades but it is put forward, interestingly, by people who tend to be not fans of the military and it’s people who are on this wild tear to bring about the end of male-female. At the core of this argument really, Tony, is that gender doesn’t matter. We’ve seen it in the marriage debate, but we see it now in this combat readiness debate.”
