They had no way to counter her argument, so they were left with one option discredit her personally with a classic use of their compliant media to smear her relentlessly with ad hominem attacks. To otherize Tulsi as non-serious. As weird, wacky, incomprehensible, foolish and therefore untrustworthy. Not to be taken seriously. To be ignored.
Answer: A flibbertijibbet! A will-o'-the wisp! A clown!
What did they have to work with? How could they pull it off? What was different about Tulsi to make her seem different than how she appears?
Their planning process in some think tank must have been like this:
What do we have to work with? Hmm, Aha! Her religious beliefs! People are generally ignorant about Hinduism, so we can make use of that to otherize her, the Christians will eat it up I imagine.
But won't that anger the Hindu community?
Yeah, but it's a risk worth taking since they are a small community. Rich, but small.
How about India?
What about it?
We tie her to Indian politics and try to make it seem like some kind of really bad thing, I mean people will believe anything about dark people with unusual religious practices. Most people probably think Indiana Jones with the brain eating thing and human sacrifice is real!
Won't Indians get angry?
I don't know, I guess we will see.
Anything else? Nothing I can think of. So, what do we do? Wait, I know, we tell everyone over and over that Tulsi is weird, wacky, inscrutable, incomprehensible, that she makes no sense, that she is a nutjob!
That's it? That doesn't sound like enough to me. She seems like a serious person. Hmm, I know, let's remind everyone that Tulsi wasn't always on board with the LGBTQ community! Liberals will hate that.
Okay. What else? I mean that was years ago, and she has a perfect score from the Human Rights Campaign for support of LGBTQ rights. Lots of politicians used to be against marriage equality, and people aren't bothered about it after they changed. Hmm, isn't there anything else?
Well, hmm, I guess we can say she hates Muslims?
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