Yet another purity test for the GOP POTUS candidates to pass. From the AFA’s Byran Fischer:

Gov. Tim Pawlenty: “Bryan, I have been a public and repeat supporter of maintaining ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ There’s a lot of reasons for that, but if you look at how the combat commanders and the combat units feel about it, the results of those kinds of surveys were different than the ones that were mostly reported in the newspaper, and that is something we need to pay attention to. But I have been a public supporter of maintaining ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ and I would support reinstating it as well.”

To my knowledge, he is the first potential presidential candidate for 2012 to go on public record that as the next commander-in-chief he would reinstate the prohibition on homosexual service in the military.

This is now the new benchmark for GOP candidates, and we should expect everyone else in the field to be asked this question and asked to answer it on the record. The fact that most of the candidates will be at CPAC makes it the perfect place for them to be directly confronted with this issue.