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Tulsi Gabbard: A voice of reason

BY JOE CONCHA, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR – 10/16/22 8:00 AM ET
THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL

“I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party. It’s now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue & stoking anti-white racism, who actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms enshrined in our Constitution.”

That was former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) earlier this week announcing why she left the Democratic Party. Except one could reasonably argue that the Democratic Party left Gabbard.

One thing’s certain: These aren’t your daddy’s donkeys anymore. President Kennedy won the approval of the nation based largely on a platform of lowering taxes and strengthening the U.S. military. Jimmy Carter was pro-life and god-fearing. And Bill Clinton was conservative on illegal immigration, crime and spending.

Clinton said things one would never hear almost any Democrat say today when it comes to decreasing the size of government, ending the welfare state and not spending what we don’t have. Not coincidentally, Clinton left office with the highest approval rating of any Democratic president of the television era.

But then the party went so far left that its most popular lawmakers on social media embrace socialism. President Biden and most other Democrats seem to believe that spending trillions of dollars is the best way to lower inflation. So much for not spending what we don’t have.

Some in the party also believe cashless bail laws that allow violent criminals onto the street somehow lower crime, or the opposite of the approach taken by the 1994 crime bill Biden once championed.

Oh, and while President Clinton was a passionate supporter of border enforcement, Biden has allowed more than 2 million people to enter the country illegally this year and won’t even admit that there is a crisis on the border.

As for education, Gabbard is one of the very few Democrats who supports Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R-Fla.) parental rights law (falsely dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by the media).

Gabbard’s overarching theme is how unsettling she sees the breakdown of basic freedoms in favor of authoritarian measures, such as the administration’s attempted rollout of the Governance Disinformation Board earlier this year.

“Every dictatorship has a propaganda arm—a ‘Ministry of Truth.’ The Biden Administration has now formally joined the ranks of such dictatorships with their creation of the so-called ‘Disinformation Governance Board,’” Gabbard tweeted in standing nearly alone among her now-former party in criticizing this disturbing creation. 

It’s frankly surprising this exit didn’t happen earlier, say after she was mistreated and disrespected by her party and the media during the 2020 presidential campaign.

CNN didn’t give Gabbard the chance to host a one-hour primetime town hall during the  campaign, despite Democratic rivals who polled lower than her getting the opportunity to do so.  

Hillary Clinton even apparently suggested, without evidence, that Gabbard may have been a Russian pawn. Not one prominent Democrat condemned Clinton for her reckless rhetoric, nor did the editorial board of any major newspapers. 

“When you have someone as powerful as Hillary Clinton seeking to smear my reputation and essentially implying that I’m a traitor to the country that I love, what she essentially is doing is taking my life away,” Gabbard said in response. Clinton never apologized. 

Soon after Gabbard’s announcement that she was leaving the party, “Good Riddence” trended on Twitter. 

Of course it did. Tulsi Gabbard isn’t woke enough for the Blue Team. She isn’t left enough for the Democratic Party. And she doesn’t conform to the Twitter mob, as so many lawmakers do. Here’s what the Jan. 6 committee missedIs the Biden administration about to put the Abraham Accords at risk?

But she is principled and pragmatic enough to see what’s happened to a party she once firmly embraced, and which was large enough to embrace her. It was once the champion of the little guy. And now, according to Gabbard, it is a party that caters to the elites. 

But Gabbard provides a rare thing in politics these days: independent thought that doesn’t toe the party line. 

Joe Concha is a media and politics columnist.