Tulsi Gabbard won't win because she's the Democrat who disagrees with Republicans, but doesn't hate them and isn't triggered by Donald Trump.
Tulsi Gabbard is one of the only Democrats who doesn’t base her politics on hatred of Donald Trump. Well, her party will have none of that. | Image: REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is taking heat from fellow Democrats for going on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program Monday night. And saying she supports Donald Trump firing the impeachment witnesses, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland.
That’s not a very popular idea among Democrats right now.
In fact, Democrats and even non-partisan media analysts have been discussing the firings as if President Donald Trump is some kind of all-powerful despot now.
They “prove” he’s the dangerous and terrible autocrat Democrats warned about.
So we get headlines like, “Trump weaponizes the Presidency after impeachment victory,” and “Donald Trump’s Impeachment Revenge Has Only Just Begun.”
The “weaponizes” headline comes from a CNN political analyst who says:
[Trump] is completing his project of fashioning the office around his own personality. It’s unrestrained, unaccountable, often profane, impervious to outside influence and factual constraints of normal governance.
That does make a compelling, dramatic narrative, and happens to serve partisan Democratic campaign messaging (or so they think). But it’s groundless hyperbole.
Tulsi Gabbard, who served as a combat medic in Iraq knows what real unrestrained, unaccountable dictatorships look like. Actual autocrats, ruling over truly despotic regimes, would have disappeared Vindman and Sondland and their whole families.
In those countries, rebels assassinate, they don’t impeach. And rulers execute.
But America is still America. And Donald Trump is not any more powerful than Barack Obama or George W. Bush were. Trump merely fired the witnesses. The brothers Vindman haven’t even lost their jobs. They’re just transferring posts from the White House to the Pentagon. Sondland will land on his feet. They’ll all be fine.
Mid-tier government officials openly revolted against the sitting executive of the most powerful nation on earth, and simply had to change jobs as a consequence.
That proves what a great country America is.
Watch Donald Trump defend Tulsi Gabbard:
She not an asset of Russia. These people are sick. There’s something wrong with them.
Trump swept to power because of the kind of politics Tulsi Gabbard opposes. The middle got tired of Democrats blowing little things out of proportion. While twisting harmless things out of context. And doing it all with an animus of malice and hatred.
Tulsi Gabbard is the Democrat her party needs most at this moment, but she won’t be elevated as their standard bearer. Because she’s not the hero they deserve.
The most visible leaders of the party of Jefferson, in elected office and the media, have made a death pact with the cynical politics of arrogance and hatred.
But that made Donald Trump their North star. Everything they do is in relation to hating and opposing Trump, which brings them into his orbit.
By contrast, Tulsi Gabbard defines herself by her progressive politics, not knee-jerk hatred and heart palpitations any time Trump breathes.