I like Tulsi Gabbard, in the sense that she’s a Democrat who does not seem to hate my guts and she is an Army light colonel who is not a simpering weasel, like some other prominent lieutenant colonels, who I wouldn’t put in command of a DFAC ice cream machine. And lots of other conservatives like Tulsi too, in large part because she will call out other Democrats. But she is a Democrat, and while I’m happy to have her in the arena providing an example of someone I disagree with engaging in civil and reasoned discourse – in contrast to the likes of the ridiculous de-districted Adam Kinzinger or the flatulent Chi Com booty caller Eric Swalwell – the bottom line is that I do disagree with her. And so do you on most things of importance.
She’s been anti-“assault weapon” while I think every healthy, law-abiding American should own at least one. She likes single payer and believes in the climate scam. She is not one of us even though she is also not our enemy in the sense that she wants to load us on trains for the reeducation camps. It’s just that a Democrat who is not sacrificing children to Baal so that he brings down his fiery wrath upon us conservative heretics is so rare she gets a ton of points for simply not wanting us dead.
I also disagree with her on Ukraine. She is more open to the Russian point of view, and she takes more seriously Russian claims that I do not. I think she’s naive about the danger Putin poses, and about the dangers we face from others looking at our alleged leaders’ incompetence. We have real interests and real enemies, and I think Tulsi is too often more “Aloha” than “Don’t tread on me.” Moreover, she also thinks the bio labs issue is a bigger deal than it probably really is, though our garbage foreign policy establishment’s track record of lies and failure means it is not unreasonable to take its denials, equivocations, and changing stories with a Mt. Everest of salt.
However, she is not “treasonous,” as that invertebrate Mitt Romney put it in an especially pathetic tweet designed to silence anyone not towing his party line. I disagree with Tulsi in that she’s too easy on Putin, but also with that dog-tormenting jerk because he’s too fake-hard. Mitt and his many healthy sons, Tigg, Tugg, Toob, Tweeb, Skipper, Muffo and Ploop, famously never served their country in uniform despite ample opportunity to put their money where their mouths are. I note that Tulsi has, so the idea of this coiffed sissy insisting that a veteran of war’s concern for the lives of our troops – none of whom are Mitt or his kids, but who are you or yours – is “treasonous” for dissenting is disgusting.
I really hate the whole chickenhawk thing. It’s intellectually bankrupt, but it’s also emotionally essential. I ran a glorified armed carwash, and I was no hero like Pete Audie Buttigieg, but I’m not going to be lectured at, nor allow a fellow officer like Tulsi to be lectured at, by this duty-dodging jerk. And he is a jerk. Remember, he hired Ric Grenell on his 2012 campaign, but when some people complained, instead of telling them “I’m standing behind Ric and if that costs me your vote, so be it,” he allowed Grenell to resign. And recently, he backstabbed Senator Mike Lee in the race against that McMuffin guy. So, Mitt can spare me his faux-moral loyalty jive. Yeah, tell me more about loyalty, you schmuck.
Tulsi does not deserve that abuse from a pipsqueak like Mitt, but we need to understand that she is no conservative. That does not mean we should not hear her out, even attempt to convert her. She was a speaker at CPAC and her speech touched on things we share in common and was well-received. We should hear out people who are not exactly where we are; testing and questioning our own ideas forges them into steel, while we can see what happens when you don’t ever escape your bubble by listening to our enemies. They can’t articulate their own views coherently, and certainly can’t articulate ours. How many times have you had one libsplain to you about how “I thought conservatives were supposed to support companies’ rights” and so forth? It you think modern conservatives are more concerned with Twitters “rights” than with making sure a pack of Silicon Valley oligarchs can’t impose a regime-friendly social credit system on all Americans, you need to get out of the Beltway more.
Tulsi agrees with some of the things we do, and it’s fine to work together where we can. But all the talk of a Trump/Tulsi ticket is just crazy talk. She’s a nice person, but she’s wrong on a lot of key points. We don’t hate her for that. We disagree. And because we disagree, let’s respect the fact that she has different views on critical issues enough to not pretend she could just paper them over and become one of us.
Might she change over time? I think she has changed some and perhaps she will change more in the future. Ronald Reagan famously evolved from a New Dealer into the scourge of the welfare state. But she’s not where we are now. And our differences matter. While her stay out of the Ukraine/Russia war position is the right one to the extent it means no US forces being involved, we should provide some (non-MiG) weapons and aid.
Tulsi should be respected not because we agree with much of what she says, but because we don’t and yet she can still act like an adult and engage with us. The “principled” frauds like Mitt who whine about Trump’s mean tweets are the ones who can’t – if you disagree with the official narrative, out comes the flaccid “treason” charge. But don’t mistake a non-enemy for a team member. She’s not a conservative, and that’s okay. She’s not an enemy, and right now that’s enough.
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