yes, these are people that i could find a lot of ways to disagree with about a lot of things, particularly their support for government interference in a number of basic civil rights issues.
however, these are also not particularly bad picks, in simple pragmatic terms, and i may find myself in general agreement with them on the exact files they're being asked to take on.
tulsi gabbard, for example, is somebody that i could definitely get in a lot of arguments with about a lot of things, but i know she has no patience for muslim extremism (due in no small part to the fact that she's an independent female), and i actually think the united states needs to reorient itself on this particular issue, as it has fallen too far into cultural relativism. i actually think she's a pretty good choice for the office she's being asked to take over.
likewise, while i would be mortified to see mike huckabee appointed as attorney general, i have been clear enough that i think we need to move on from the palestine question and leave the palestinians behind. they deserve basic civil rights as full citizens of israel, including some kind of compensation for the eminent domain seizures of their land. getting to that point means getting over the sovereignty question as a 20th century issue that's no longer relevant.
both of these picks demonstrate the basic fact that the democratic party is stuck in the past and needs to be dragged out of it, kicking and screaming.
conversely, matt gaetz seems to be an astonishingly poor pick that might not get approved by a republican senate. i don't think rfk jr has the slightest chance of getting confirmed. further, is elon musk going to put his investments in a blind trust, or what? is he going to step down from tesla, twitter and space x? did he think this through at all? does he even know what a conflict of interest is?
what i've been saying for years now is that i disagree equally with the republican and democratic parties, i just disagree with them in different ways. i disagree with about 80% of what both of the parties want, and i have about 20% support for either of them, and there's no intersection in the policies i support from the two parties. this makes sense by noting that i'm a libertarian socialist, and that the democrats in truth have only a small policy base that would appear to a liberal while the republicans have only a small policy base that would appeal to a libertarian.
as far as i'm concerned, the democrats and republicans are both conservative parties and two sides of the same coin.
but, faced with the real world in front of us today right now, gabbard and rubio are likely better foreign policy choices than anthony blinken or jake sullivan, and i may actually like more of what gets done under this new direction than the existing one. i have never heard of pete hegseth before and cannot produce an educated comment about him, i'll have to wait and see. my initial analysis would be that he might not get confirmed.
i would ask rubio to tone it down on cuba. i will probably disagree with him on that.
but we actually need a good round of bombing in key regions right now (yemen, especially) to take out some problems that the biden administration refused to address and i hope these guys actually go out and do it.