When Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema first eked out a victory for Jeff Flake’s Senate seat over Martha McSally last year, I will admit to being a little horrified.

How could Arizona replace even the squishy RINO Flake with a former Green Party (read: Marxist) activist, openly LGBT person (note: I don’t care that she’s bisexual; I care that she flogs her sexuality for votes) to represent the state in the Senate?

How could someone who protested war in a pink tutu be taken seriously on Capitol Hill as a legislator?

The world is a dangerous place. We need strong leaders who understand the threat, and respect our troops. Kyrsten Sinema fails the test. #AZSen pic.twitter.com/jWaB0clsxh

— McSally For Senate (@MarthaMcSally) August 23, 2018

But I will admit that I have been pleasantly surprised by Kyrsten Synema several times, and although there’s no doubt that she began her political career as a freakish Code Pink weirdo, she has not remained a screeching rodeo clown.

She has not voted crazy, and I have appreciated her effort to reach across the partisan aisle on issues such as Congressional pay about which we railed when Congressional representatives attempted to make the rest of us who aren’t making $174,000 per year, not including benefits, to feel sorry for them “having to” sleep in their offices because they ostensibly couldn’t afford a place to live in DC.

Kyrsten Sinema, on the other hand, is trying to right an egregious wrong. When Congress fails to do its job, its members should not get paid (especially when hundreds of federal workers deemed “essential” are forced to work without pay) until Congress gets its act together and pulls its collective head out of its collective ass, so she co-sponsored a letter to congressional leaders along with Republican Rick Scott urging them to add language to the end-of-year spending bill that prevents members of Congress from getting paid if they fail to pass a spending bill. Kyrsten Sinema also consistently sponsored the No Budget, No Pay Act since being elected.

“If members of Congress fail to do their jobs, then they should not get paid. I’ll keep reaching across the aisle to fix a broken Washington and deliver for Arizona.”

Good for her!

Kyrsten Sinema supports increasing the number of US troops at our border with Mexico.

In May she introduced the Daniel Somers Network of Support Act to create networks of support for service members.

Sgt. Somers served two tours in Iraq and was diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries and PTSD upon returning home. He lost his life to suicide in 2013. After Sinema learned of Sgt. Somers’ story, she worked with his parents, Howard and Jean Somers, to introduce and successfully pass the Daniel Somers Access to Care Act, which ensures veterans who worked in classified jobs can receive behavioral health services in an appropriate care setting. Now, Sinema is working with the Somers to expand their network of support concept.

And Kyrsten Sinema has enough integrity to understand that the Democrats’ impeachment case against President Trump is so weak, that the Wall Street Journal dubbed it “The Incredible Shrinking Impeachment.” The International Business Times named her as one of three Democrats expected to oppose convicting the President in the Senate, along with Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Doug Jones of Alabama.

As a Congresswoman in 2017, she interestingly enough voted in line with Donald Trump’s positions approximately half the time, unlike the unhinged liberal proglodyes on Capitol Hill who simply oppose any Trump initiative on principle because ORANGEMANBAD. According to the left-leaning Five ThirtyEight, as of December, Sinema voted in line with Trump’s position on legislation about 53 percent of the time.

No, this does not mean Kyrsten Sinema is a conservative. She’s far from it, considering her 27 percent lifetime rating from Americans for Prosperity and 100 percent rating from Planned Parenthood. But I have been pleasantly surprised at the way she has evolved from an unhinged activist who “led a group that distributed flyers depicting an American soldier as a skeleton inflicting ‘U.S. terror’ in Iraq and the Middle East,” to someone who understands that “you should never take military intervention off the table,” especially when you have rogue nations and rogue actors running them emerging all over the world. She voted against the JCPOA (the Iran nuclear deal), supported last year’s strike on Syria, and in 2015 joined Republican colleagues in a measure to stop admitting Iraqi and Syrian refugees until vetting measures were strengthened.

Kyrsten Sinema is no doubt a liberal Democrat, but since her election she has actually been a pleasant surprise. Most of my male friends think she’s incredibly attractive, but I do think she’s thoughtful and intelligent, and that makes her a bit more than just a pretty face.

Maybe my standards have been lowered because her colleagues are such unhinged, obnoxious twats. It’s possible.

Featured photo: official portrait; in the public domain in the United States because it is a work prepared by an officer or employee of the United States Government as part of that person’s official duties