Saturday, November 16, 2024

Imperial Aloha?

 


Michael Tracey (who more or less supported Gabbard in 2020) is disappointed by her recent political evolution. From his X account.

>>>Tulsi Gabbard ran an entire presidential campaign advocating for such things as: federal codification of abortion rights, eliminating fossil fuels, banning "assault weapons," unraveling virtually all US sanctions, condemning Israel for its "illegal occupation" of Palestine -- as well as denouncing Trump for betraying his voters, violating the Constitution, and running an "imperial" foreign policy that was hurtling the world into war and nuclear apocalypse. >>>She subsequently abandoned these positions, because an opportunity arose to insinuate herself into the Republican Party -- which of course requires abandoning any critique of Trump. This was to be accomplished by a steadfast campaign of aggressive memory-holing, along with throwing a bunch of Culture War red meat to Republican voters (a tactic she also used to ridicule.) >>>Tulsi Gabbard used to routinely castigate Trump for being surrounded by "warmongers" like Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, and Nikki Haley. Trump has now appointed ideologically indistinguishable people to those exact same positions: Marco Rubio, Mike Waltz, and Elise Stefanik. But her earlier critique will of course need to vanish, because making an honest critique is no longer compatible with her pursuit of power. >>>People keep telling me she "changed her mind." Not to be vain, but I did cover her more closely than literally anyone else in the United States. >>>If she has "changed her mind," and for instance no longer believes that Donald Trump facilitated "genocide" in his first term by arming the Saudi pulverization of Yemen, she should explain why she decided to retract that position. >>>There is zero indication that Trump intends to adjust his policy toward Saudi Arabia in the slightest. If anything he's pledged to "double down." >>>She has proven that she no longer holds to the positions she once espoused in any discernible fashion. No real through-line between now and the 2020 campaign can be reliably traced. >>>In the 2022 midterms, she bizarrely went around endorsing candidates like Chuck Grassley, Don Bolduc, and Herschel Walker, who had absolutely nothing to do with the positions she'd espoused two years prior. By this point, she'd become a paid Fox News contributor, which is the surest way to eventually join a Trump Administration.
>>>In short, she decided to overturn her prior stated convictions in pursuit of power. I consider that crass, unprincipled opportunism -- not just randomly "changing her mind." 

Original tweet

No comments:

Post a Comment