Josh Marshall,
here, has been posting today about a fundraising event for Representative Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO). A uniformed member of the military, a USMC Sergeant named Brandon Forsyth, attended the event, in uniform, as a participant.
This is as clear cut a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice as there is. I know this because I violated it myself once.
But check under the hood...
In 1986 I had an additional duty doing a briefing for my unit, in the course of which I dressed up in a Soviet uniform and in a thick "moose and squirrel are escaping!" accent attempted to give the Soviet point of view on technological development efforts, in a counterpoint with another officer dressed in the normal USAF uniform doing the American spin on the same thing. It wasn't as totally propagandistic as it sounds (we had to source every line the "Russian" said to a published origin, and keep updating it as the party line changed) but it was definitely on the edge of things. At the end of the briefing, the "Russian" character revealed himself, and then the audience was supposed to think about stuff. Hey, it was the Cold War. What can you do?
Anyway, in 1986 I was asked to repeat the briefing with another officer for James Bunning's first run for Congress, at a thousand buck a plate fundraiser. The pressure my commander put me under was unbelievable, and as a new lieutenant with orders in hand to a flying job, I felt that I had a gun to my head. So I did the briefing. I prepared a disclaimer beforehand. "Oh, hey, we were in the neighborhood, heard there was food, saw an audience, and we've been known to brief anything that moves including the animals at the zoo so whatever. We're not endorsing anybody or anything. This is just public affairs stuff." I'm certain it didn't sink in.
I didn't eat my thousand dollar dinner (nor did I expense it), and just had water until the briefing was over and the political part of the evening began, upon which time we left. I did spend about 45 minutes sitting with Lee Atwater, who seemed astounded that an Air Force lieutenant knew anything at all about the election in Portugal he was working on at the time.
Long story short - the military can't be identified with a single party. It's totally dangerous to democracy and its institutions. That aggressive political neutrality has been eroding the entire time I've been in and has become embarrassing now.
And the worst part of it is that there are no consequences for the politicians that encourage or foster this sort of behavior. They bear none of the consequences for this perversion and undermining of the role of the military in a liberal democracy.