Former Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard may find herself more at home in the Republican Party.
She quit the Democratic Party in October saying on Twitter: “I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic party that is under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers who are driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue and stoking anti-white racism.”
Tusli Gabbard described herself as a free thinker within her former party.
“I’ve always floated in the spectrum of Democratic politics because I’m an independent thinker,” Gabbard said at an event in Washington State in September.
Tulsi Gabbard: Crossing the Isle
Today’s Republican Party remains more ideologically diverse and less in lockstep than the Democratic Party, which gives Gabbard flexibility. She falls squarely within the libertarian wing of the party on national security matters, which has been skeptical of military spending and the “forever wars” that Donald Trump rode to victory railing against in 2016.
Libertarians have also been at odds with religious conservatives in the Republican Party over issues such as gay rights and abortion.
The Libertarian CATO Institute praised Gabbard in 2018 saying, “Tulsi Gabbard is talking about what really matters. The bipartisan War Party has done its best to wreck America and plenty of other nations too. Gabbard is courageously challenging the Democrats in this coalition, who have become complicit in Washington’s criminal wars.”
Gabbard, who represented Hawaii in Congress and ran for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 2020, is far to the Left end of the political spectrum. She boasts a 9 percent rating according to the American Conservative Union (ACU).
Gabbard endorsed Bernie Sanders for president in 2016. She served as vice-chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee at the time.
“We need a commander-in-chief who has foresight, exercises good judgement, and who understands the need for a robust foreign policy which defends the safety and security of the American people on interventionist wars of regime change,” Gabbard said in her endorsement of Sanders. “Such counterproductive wars undermine our national security and economic prosperity.
Gabbard continued: “We can elect a president who will lead us into more interventionist wars of regime change, or we can elect a president who will usher in a new era of peace and prosperity.”
Her experience in Iraq colored her views on wars of intervention, having seen the horror of war up close as a medic. Tulsi Gabbard is a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve.
“Joining the military wasn’t something that I had thought of before, but in the wake of (the 9/11 attacks) I knew that somehow, someway I wanted and needed to find a way to serve our country and to help go after those who attacked us on that day,” she said. “Every single day serving in that medical unit, (I) was frankly confronted with the fragility of life and the human cost of war.”
She told the Washington crowd that she sees “moral rot and corrosion” in America that needs addressing.
On domestic issues, Gabbard is a Centrist. She supports a universal basic income and raising the minimum wage, which are Liberal Democratic priorities. However, she also supported tariffs against China, ending the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), auditing the Federal Reserve, testing welfare recipients for drug users, and other issues that put her in the mainstream of the Republican Party.
Simply stated: Gabbard would be a better fit for the GOP.
Tulsi Gabbard on Fox News. Image Credit: Fox News Screengrab.
John Rossomando’s work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award in 2008 for his reporting.
