SATISH SHARMA - not just Rotigraphy.: ‘Putin puppet’ vs ‘Assad shill’: Dems & Reps unite in panic over Gabbard challenging Trump in 2020

Published time: 12 Jan, 2019 05:51

With Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) entering the 2020 presidential fray, establishment figures on both Right and Left are scrambling to smear the anti-war congresswoman with impeccable identity-politics bona fides.

Ever since her 2017 visit to Syria, Gabbard has been condemned for daring to seek firsthand accounts rather than blindly trusting the MSM narrative, so on Friday the pundits were again off to the races, with fresh accusations of Assad-sympathizing.

“Assad apologist” seems to be the Tulsi equivalent of “Putin puppet,” judging from the early tweets, though she was accused of being one of those too.

Palmer Report

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Tulsi Gabbard is where I draw the line. She’s a right wing lunatic, she supports Assad, she’s a Trump pal, she tried to sabotage the DNC from within in 2016, and Russia Today loves her. She’s the one Democrat I will oppose in 2020. She’s not a real Democrat, she’s Steve Bannon.

Palmer Report

✔@PalmerReport

My support for every other Democratic 2020 candidate still stands. But Tulsi Gabbard? Hell no. She should have been banned from the party a long time ago. Fucking monster. She’ll use her campaign to try to destroy the Democratic Party during the primary. I won’t allow it.

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7:18 AM - Jan 12, 2019

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Gabbard certainly poses a thorny problem for the neocon-neoliberal axis, as she checks all the identity politics boxes – the first Hindu member of Congress, a woman, a veteran – and she has undeniable populist appeal, given her anti-establishment record. While Gabbard is a Democrat, she was emphatically not a Clinton supporter, resigning as vice chair of the Democratic National Committee in February 2016 to endorse Bernie Sanders in the primary.

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But Republicans, too, felt the need to speak up against her. “Liberals think she’s too conservative, conservatives think she’s too liberal, and just about everyone thinks her coziness with Bashar al-Assad is disturbing,” Republican National Committee spokesman Michael Ahrens said, also mentioning the congresswoman’s “lack of experience.”

The RNC released a “cheat sheet” of talking points following the news of Gabbard’s pending announcement, though some took that as a sign of weakness.