Gabbard and Kennedy’s Confirmations Kills the Old GOP

This Tuesday, two of President Trump’s most controversial – and necessary – appointees took their first step toward assuming office. Lt. Col. Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s nominee to be Director of National Intelligence, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., his nominee to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, both passed their committee votes, despite worrying initial warning signs that Senators such as Todd Young (R-IN), and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) might defect. However, those warning signs, thanks in no small part to unprecedented pressure from the Republican grassroots base, turned out to be false alarms.

We, at least, are very relieved. To be sure, this is partially because Gabbard and RFK represent long overdue corrections to Washingtonian institutions. Gabbard will serve as a corrective to an intelligence bureaucracy which has grown arrogant, insular, and clannish and which, despite a string of failures, still fancies themselves as infallible protectors of America. Kennedy, meanwhile, is the worst nightmare of the unholy alliance between America’s healthcare regulators and the pharmaceutical industry. If you want evidence of that, just look at the fact that his clearing the committee transformed Elizabeth “Pocahontas” Warren into a shrieking Karen. Warren, who has received over $5 million from the health industry, has a right to be worried; that’s one gravy train that potentially just ran dry. But her funders have even more reason to be worried, given that Kennedy cheerfully committed – under her questioning — to not taking their money, and seems bent on suing them for any improprieties he discovers.

So on the merits, Gabbard and RFK’s incoming confirmations are good news. But that’s not all there is to be proud of. This Thursday, the third of President Trump’s “controversial” nominees, Kash Patel, will also be voted on in committee. If Gabbard and RFK can clear their votes, that’s a good sign for Patel, who’s faced far less open skepticism from the GOP caucus, and whose nomination as FBI Director is just as vital. After years of seeing the FBI weaponized against everyone from parents, to devout Catholics, to President Trump himself, it’s about time the agency had a director who’ll start cutting heads and demanding accountability. Patel is that nominee.

But more important than all this is one basic fact: the elevation of Gabbard and Kennedy – both of whom are former Democrats — is about more than their individual qualifications. It is about realigning the GOP away from its toxic, out-of-touch former brand once and for all, and bending it to the pro-working class, pro-peace, and pro-accountable government philosophy which President Trump’s visionary leadership embodies.

Because, at the risk of bringing up a sore topic, let’s remember where we had to come from to get here. Ten years ago, before then-candidate Trump descended the golden escalator, the GOP was a very different party indeed: a party of stodgy, out-of-touch, visibly greying men still clinging to ideas that had been disproved by events. Theirs was a party of corporate simps, who were eager to throw money at some of the most regulated, predatory, self-dealing industries in America, the instant those industries flashed a bit of capitalist leg. A party of chickenhawks squatting atop a nest built from defense industry stock options, who sent poor heritage Americans to die in wars based on false intelligence while hiding their own children in ivory towers. A party of D-list aspiring Stasi, all of whom aspired to ever more administrative power to surveil and discredit their political opponents, while hiding behind the fig leaf notion that “you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide,” ignoring the much more realistic idea that to show an intelligence agency a man is to invite them to show you a crime. Just look at Paul Ryan, John Bolton, and Liz Cheney if you want to see representative samples of what we mean. […]

— Read More: humanevents.com