Are there any real Republicans left? Tulsi, RFK Jr. offer them a chance to stand up

Among the most shocking actions taken by Donald Trump and the Republicans in the first week of his new administration — and there were many — successfully confirming a totally inexperienced weekend TV show host with obvious character flaws and a penchant for war criminals as defense secretary was one for the books. Pete Hegseth is now in charge of the world's most powerful military, as well as the country's largest bureaucracy, and he is completely unqualified for that task in every way. But he is a Trump loyalist for sure. It says something about the president's coterie of followers that Hegseth was the best he could do.

There was some visible discomfort among Republican senators. Three of them actually voted against Hegseth, including former majority leader Mitch McConnell, along with Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine. Not a single Democrat supported Hegseth, leaving the Senate divided 50-50, which meant that Vice President JD Vance was required to cast the tie-breaking vote. Other Republicans who had expressed reservations came home in the end, likely because Hegseth is a true blue MAGA warrior with the full backing of the hardcore base, which made its wishes known in no uncertain terms. You could tell that whole experience left a bad taste in some senators' mouths, but they weren't willing to poke those bears.

There are a couple of nominations coming up this week that may give those Republican senators an opportunity to pretend to themselves that they still have some integrity, and a chance to salvage some self-respect. There will be hearings for former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard and anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump's nominees for director of national intelligence and secretary of Health and Human Services, respectively. Neither has any obviously relevant experience for those positions — and both have, shall we say, some unique characteristics that ought to be disqualifying in themselves.

Gabbard is a shocking choice for this particular job atop the entire intelligence community given that she has frequently been accused of alliance or sympathy with global adversaries of the U.S., particularly Russia. Perhaps her most famous act as a politician was her travel to Syria under false pretenses, where she met with then-president Bashar Assad, a dictatorial strongman accused of war crimes against his own people. After being overthrown in December, Assad is now in exile in Russia, whose talking points have been embraced by Gabbard over the last couple of years, most pointedly over who caused or started the war in Ukraine. To say that she's a bizarre choice for a top Intelligence job is an understatement, and it's causing severe consternation among U.S. allies.

But there's more to Gabbard than that, although honestly that should be enough. She was born into a Hindu sect that has sometimes been described as cult-like, and remains a member, as are her husband and most of her closest aides. According to Elaine Godfrey of the Atlantic, that relationship is the one "throughline" in her politically peripatetic career. Following the tenets of the so-called Science of Identity Foundation, an offshoot of the Hare Krishna movement led by a man named Chris Butler, Gabbard started out as a conservative anti-LGBTQ politician before morphing into a progressive ally of Bernie Sanders as a member of Congress. Next came her bizarre turn as a pro-Assad advocate and an eventual falling out with the Democratic Party. After that she went on Fox News, where she charmed the MAGA faithful and endorsed Trump. And here she is today, nominated to become America's top Intelligence official.

But who is Gabbard, really? She's only been a Republican for a couple of years, and ran for president as a Democrat in 2020. Can MAGA trust someone with that history? National Review, a flagship of GOP orthodoxy, certainly doesn't think so, calling her "an atrocious nominee who deserves to be defeated." Gabbard does not appear to inspire the sorts of threats and intimidation that Hegseth did, so if any GOP senators feel the impulse to demonstrate some vestigial independence, this nomination is probably pretty safe from the MAGA hordes.

That ought to go double for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who ran for president as a Democrat last year before attempting a third-party campaign and then endorsing Trump, in exchange for what turned out to be a Cabinet nomination. It's hard to imagine that Trump actually cares that much whether RFK Jr. gets the job at HHS. The president may even be hoping that the Senate will save him from this guy, since it's clear that he's going to be nothing but trouble.

By this time, most people are aware that Kennedy is a crank and a weirdo who believes that vaccines have caused a Holocaust among children and has admitted to dumping a dead bear in Central Park as a joke — when he was already over 60. Among other loony conspiracy theories he embraces, Kennedy told Joe Rogan that "wifi radiation” could be causing autism, food allergies, asthma, eczema and other chronic conditions, saying, "I think it degrades your mitochondria and it opens your blood-brain barrier." He has been accused of contributing to the deaths of dozens of Samoan children by pushing bogus anti-vaccine ideas. He doesn't entirely believe in germ theory, suggesting that a "healthy" human body cannot be damaged by microbes. 

These ideas are downright medieval, at best. This person has no business being in government in any capacity, much less overseeing the agency responsible for public health, Medicare and Medicaid. It is unacceptable that he was even nominated.

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Now it turns out that he appears to be corrupt as well, having made millions off anti-vaccine suits brought by law firms with which he's been affiliated. He says he has no intention of giving up that gravy train as HHS secretary, even though he would have direct control of the nation’s vaccine policy.

Kennedy is a member of the most famous Democratic political family in America, and supported that party himself until about  five minutes ago. He still says he's pro-choice, which is generally a deal breaker in GOP politics. That has brought out some token opposition from outside groups, including one led by former Vice President Mike Pence. He's assured all the GOP senators that he won't let his liberal affiliations get in the way of Trump's agenda, but if any of them have even the slightest concern for the health of the American people (or simply for themselves and their families) surely they can find the smidgen of courage it would take to tell Trump that they can't vote for a pro-choice nominee.

All of this is assuming that anyone beyond Murkowski, Collins and McConnell, who have made clear they won't vote for either of these absurd nominees, actually gives a damn. There is little reason to think the other 50 Republican senators care about anything beyond hanging onto their seats. But if they just tell the MAGA they can't possibly vote for a Democrat, they might be able to wriggle off the hook.