The popular Democratic congresswoman and presidential candidate, Tulsi Gabbard, has always steered clear of the "Impeach 45" and "impeach the m-----------" extremists in her party.  Holding out against Nancy Pelosi's impeachment inquiry, the representative from Hawaii's 2nd District recently told Fox and Friends' Brian Kilmeade, "Impeachment at this juncture would be terribly divisive."  After the White House released the transcript of President Trump's Ukraine call last Wednesday, Gabbard stayed the course, stating, "Most people reading through that transcript are not going to find that extremely compelling."

Two days later, Gabbard did an about-face, declaring her support for impeachment.  "If we allow the president to abuse his or her power, then our society will rot from top to bottom.  We will turn into a banana republic, where people in positions of power — from the president all the way down to the traffic cop — will feel it's OK to abuse their power with no consequences," she said.

Gabbard's a serial and shrewd flip-flopper.

From her first days in politics at the age of 21, Gabbard's been all over the battlefield, running from one side to the other.  She started out as a pro-life, social conservative fighting same-sex "marriage."  She changed sometime before her 2012 election and is now pro-abortion.  She accepted support from the unrestricted abortion rights groups EMILY's List, Planned Parenthood, and NARAL and is militantly pro same-sex "marriage."

She won her congressional seat, like many of EMILY's List's recruits, touting her military background.  Gabbard praised then–vice president Joe Biden and former president Obama "as the strongest advocates our military families could have."  With the 2016 election, Gabbard seemed to change course again.  She started making regular appearances on Fox News, often criticizing Obama for not recognizing that "Islamic terrorists are our enemy."

Running for re-election in 2018, Gabbard again had the backing of the pro-abortion groups and the AFL-CIO.  She supported Democratic positions on gun control, the environment, and health care.

Despite Gabbard's hardcore progressive platform, conservatives in various media outlets laud her as an independent-minded, roguish straight shooter.  This adulation intensified in recent weeks when the DNC excluded Gabbard from participating in the Democrats' third debate.  When she appeared on Tucker Carlson's show to decry the lack of transparency in the qualifying polls for the debate, a sympathetic Carlson responded:

[T]he Democratic Party appears eager to sideline her. Gabbard has done well in a number of recent polls but the Democratic Party does not recognize those polls, and may use that to keep her off the debate stage next month.

Besides Fox News, Gabbard's other unlikely defenders are National Review, who ran this headline in 2015: "Meet the Beautiful, Tough, Young Democrat Who's Turning Heads by Challenging Obama's Foreign Policy."  Breitbart, the Daily Caller, the American Enterprise Institute's Arthur Brooks, the Washington Examiner, Legal Insurrection, and Trump's former chief strategist Steve Bannon have all expressed their fondness for the Democrat congresswoman.

Coincidentally, on the same day Gabbard sided with impeachment-deranged Democrats and on the same day she accused President Trump of turning us into a banana republic, her name appeared on the DNC's list of 12 candidates scheduled for the next October debate.

Photo credit: Matt Johnson.