Joni Ernst

Tulsi Gabbard has been roundly described for weeks as the Trump cabinet nominee with the most narrow path to approval, with multiple media sources suggesting that she does not have the Republican votes to win should she even get out of the Senate Intelligence Committee. But if that is the case, it wasn’t on display in her performance before the committee today — not in her presentation, her chosen backers, nor in the lines of questioning from Republican members. It has been widely suggested that two senators, Todd Young of Indiana and Susan Collins of Maine, could potentially break with Trump by siding against Gabbard in the behind-the-scenes vote on her nomination.

Sometimes the true power of someone new to politics is that they don't arrive in Washington with any of the preconceived notions about the possible. In a political moment that is decidedly post-norms, that's what made Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville's stance against an array of foes, including many on his own side of the aisle, so impressive. Tuberville came to Washington as a cipher. He was a Republican, certainly, and a conservative endorsed by Donald Trump by dint of the failure of Jeff Sessions's brief tenure as attorney general. But it was convenient to think of him as a former football coach who viewed being one of the hundred members of the United States Senate as a step down from the task of raising up some of the most talented athletes in the nation.