Tulsi Gabbard didn’t vote to impeach President Trump. She also didn’t vote not to impeach him. Instead, taking a page from Barack Obama’s playbook, she voted “present.”
During the Clinton impeachment trial, Arlen Specter invoked “Scottish law” and voted “not proved.” That was bizarre and perhaps gutless, but at least Specter’s vote conveyed a sense of how he viewed the evidence.
Gabbard’s non-vote did not.
Later, she explained that she could not oppose impeachment “because I believe President Trump is guilty of wrongdoing,” nor could she back it “because removal of a sitting President must not be the culmination of a partisan process, fueled by tribal animosities that have so gravely divided our country.”
This makes no sense. Under the Constitution, “wrongdoing” is not grounds for impeachment. The standard is higher that. If Gabbard didn’t believe this higher standard was met, she should have voted against impeachment. If she believed it was, her vote should have been “yes.”
Some conservatives seem to hold Gabbard in fairly high regard. I can sort of see why. She served our country in Iraq and she destroyed Kamala Harris during one of the early Democratic presidential debates.
However, when it comes to policy, which is what really counts, Gabbard favors a leftist agenda on the domestic front and is an isolationist when it comes to foreign policy/national security. There was a time when many conservatives considered Democrats like this the worst kind of left-liberal. I still do.
These days, there’s an understandably heightened reluctance among many conservatives to send U.S. troops into combat and to keep them in harm’s way. But Gabbard’s views are extreme. Josh Rogin put it this way:
Among the Democratic candidates, there’s consensus that it’s time to end “forever wars.” But only Gabbard consistently struggles to admit that Assad is one of the worst war criminals in history.
Only Gabbard asserts that the United States (not Assad) is responsible for the death and destruction in Syria, that the Russian airstrikes on civilians are to be praised, that efforts to protect Syrian civilians are wrongheaded and that the United States must side with Assad.
This is not how President Trump views the matter, nor how any other conservative should view it.
As a presidential candidate, Gabbard has said that her past comments have been “misunderstood.” If so, that’s because Gabbard has failed to speak with sufficient clarity about Syria and Assad.
It seems to me, however, that Gabbard wants to have both ways on Assad and Syria. Just as she wants with impeachment.
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