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Six years ago I tagged along with Tulsi Gabbard as she campaigned for Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed Democratic socialist from Vermont running for president, in Hawaii.

Gabbard, then a Democrat from the 2nd Congressional District, accompanied Sanders’ wife, Jane, to greet veterans at Tommy Kakesako Hall on Nimitz Highway and then later to the Church of the Crossroads on University Avenue. Already on record as a harsh critic of Hillary Clinton, the party’s eventual nominee in 2016, Gabbard herself would seek the Dem nomination just four years later.

How remarkable, then, to now see Gabbard — who represented one of the bluest states in the nation for eight years in Washington — aggressively campaigning on behalf of a number of high-profile Republicans this year, including several who express strong doubts about the integrity of the 2020 election that booted Donald Trump from the White House in favor of Joe Biden.

Fact check: Biden won by more than 7 million votes. There was and is no evidence of widespread voter fraud. But more than half of all GOP candidates this year . Trump himself his 2024 reelection bid later this month.

Gabbard has campaigned for Arizona’s GOP gubernatorial nominee , “a fervent election denier Trump loyalist;” GOP Senate candidate Don Bolduc of New Hampshire, where Gabbard compared ; and Georgia Senate candidate , if evolution is real, “Why are there still apes?”

The National Review, meanwhile, reports that — while Gabbard supports abortion — she is urging voters , which would add “an unlimited right to abortion” to the Michigan state constitution.

“It includes legal loopholes that allow late-term and partial-birth abortions, which essentially is really infanticide,” she said. “It also overturns a law that requires parents to know if their child is pursuing an abortion or gender-hormone therapies.”

And just last week, in a YouTube promotion for the former congresswoman proclaimed the right to bear arms “shall not be infringed” and is a “God-given right.”

Should the U.S. House fall to Republicans this week, as seems likely — and perhaps the U.S. Senate as well — the next two years will almost certainly be a very bumpy ride. It could include GOP-led investigations into the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, into Hunter Biden and his business dealings, and into the Jan. 6 commission.

If so, credit Gabbard — who left the Democratic Party just last month — for bringing the GOP to power. It is obvious to many that she is positioning herself for the vice presidency in 2024, if not the presidency again.

‘Elitist Cabal’

Gabbard is once again garnering national attention, but for very different reasons than in years past.

“Republicans once slammed Tulsi Gabbard as a socialist seeking to appease dictators like Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin,” . “These days, much of the GOP is embracing her.”

To some, Gabbard is a principled politician not afraid to speak out, especially against the Democratic Party — “an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness,” whatever that means. To others, she is a base opportunist, an apostate and a hypocrite who once promised to take a “message of aloha” to the world.

Regardless, Gabbard is today poised to surf a red tide. That’s in contrast to Liz Cheney, who badly lost her reelection bid to the U.S. House earlier this year in Wyoming, one of the reddest states in the nation. She from the GOP leadership in the House, and she is Enemy No. 1 at Mar-a-Lago.

And yet Cheney has shown true courage and conviction, not a chameleon-like changing of colors, even while understanding the risks of doing so. She vigorously called out Trump’s big lie about the “stolen” 2020 election, she voted to impeach him after the Jan. 6 insurrection and she helped lead the House investigation into what happened that awful day.

Compare that to Gabbard, who famously and shamelessly voted “present” during Trump’s first impeachment to do him “a favor.” But Trump noticed and praised Gabbard. Mission accomplished.

Like Gabbard, Cheney has been out on the campaign trail, but she is advocating for Democrats. Her endorsements include Rep. Abigail Spanberger, Democrat of Virginia, who Cheney admires because GOP opponent Yesli Vega “is promoting conspiracy theories, denying election outcomes she disagrees with, and defending the indefensible,” said Cheney.

Vega has also expressed doubt about .

Cheney went to central Michigan on Tuesday to promote one of the most vulnerable Democrats, Rep. Elissa Slotkin, whose GOP opponent, state Sen. Tom Barrett, has said the legitimacy of the 2020 election remains “an unknowable thing,” .

As with Gabbard, the national press has noticed Cheney’s moves as well.

“For the first time in her political career — in her life, she said — Ms. Cheney was campaigning for a Democrat,” The New York Times reported Sunday.

The reason? Well, to save democracy.

Cheney told PBS, “We have to have elected officials who are responsible, who are going to do the right thing, with whom you might disagree but who you know have the best interest of the nation at heart and in mind.”

If only more American politicians shared such noble ideals. If only fewer were less obsessed with naked ambition.