We Learn A Bit More About Tulsi

John Hinderaker put up an interesting post at Powerline last night, based on his encounter with Tulsi Gabbard at a speaking engagement. He’s extremely complimentary towards Tulsi (she asked to be called Tulsi), as you can tell from the title of the post: Four Cheers for Tulsi.

However, beyond the generally positive remarks regarding how effective Tulsi is in her obviously careful preparation, as a speaker, and in her interactions with people she has only just encountered, we also learn a bit more about where she’s headed. Not too much, but a bit. There’s lots more at the link, but this is what caught my attention.

I began by asking about her plans for the future: does she plan to run for office again? Will she join the Republican Party? Not surprisingly, she wasn’t ready to answer those questions. She said she has issues with Republicans, too, who support the same status quo in Washington that so many Democrats do. Between now and the election, she is criss-crossing the country on behalf of a number of candidates. She said she would send me a list of the candidates she is supporting, but I will be surprised if any of them are Democrats given her divorce from that party.

* We had an exchange about her characterization of Democrats as warmongers–something that I said it is hard for those of us who came of age in the Vietnam era to wrap our heads around. Her view of war is largely shaped by her own tours of duty in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. She was eloquent about that. She is a skeptic about our role in Ukraine, and defended that position ably. And her commitment to our military continues, as she is now a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserve.

* It is hard to overstate how positively our audience responded to Tulsi. I had thought her views might be a little too “based” for some of our people, but that didn’t seem to be the case. I think her patriotism, intelligence and good will are so obvious that people are willing to cut her slack if they disagree on an issue or two. And maybe those disagreements are fewer than I thought.

So, the first takeaway is that Tulsi will not be providing any blanket endorsement for all Republicans. Any endorsements will depend very much on their policy positions, and it sounds like she won’t be endorsing politicians who simply toe the Neocon foreign policy line. I regard Hinderaker pretty much as an elite war monger himself, so the fact that Tulsi received such a positive response from the crowd at Hinderaker’s American Experiment suggests the extent to which mainstream conservatives have come to understand and to reject the construct of America as global hegemon. Since few Americans really concern themselves with foreign policy in a truly meaningful way, I take that as an indication that these people realize that the real crisis for the world isn’t in Ukraine—it’s much closer to home, in the Swamp that Trump was never able to drain. The war mongering of the past three decades is now seen as part of that problem, and the spectacle of the Imperial City on the Potomac under a months long occupation by our woke military may have had more of an impact on public consciousness than previously thought.

The second takeway is that, very obviously, Tulsi is not rejecting the possibility of a future run for public office. That means she’s thinking about it. However, unless something changes drastically in Hawaian politics, it’s difficult to see her running for office there. Her issues are national issues, so Hawaian politics likely excludes her from a run for Congress or the Senate in such a Deep Blue state. Her move back to her socially conservative family roots in recent months definitely militates against that. That would seem to limit her to two possibilities, both in 2024: A third party run for president, or a place on a Republican ticket as VP. It’s hard at this point to see her standing up a campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, although it’s not impossible. Her foreign policy views are almost certainly anathema to the GOP establishment. Even if she were to trim her policy sails a bit, she could never win their trust at this point, not with her track record.

Of course, there is another possibility. If she is as effective as hoped in ginning up popular support for up and coming GOP presidential hopefuls, she could be looking at a significant appointment, perhaps even at the cabinet level.

Am I getting ahead of the cart? I’m not endorsing her. I said we’d be learning more about her, and we are. That will continue. We know that she’s serious about her policy ideas, but we also know that she’s cautious—she waited to jump the ‘Rat ship until a Red Wave looked like a relatively sure bet. We’ll keep learning.

DeSantis/Tulsi? Megyn Kelly is persuasive:

Megyn Kelly Notes Why Ron DeSantis Doesn’t Stand a Chance Against Donald Trump, She is Not Wrong

Trump/Tulsi? That works because if Trump runs he won’t be beholden to the GOP establishment. It’s still early days, but planning for a presidential run starts early.