Forget “Tulsi Gabbard, Rising Star.” It’s now “Tulsi Gabbard, Superstar.”

My apologies to Andrew Lloyd Webber, but can it be much longer before Hawaii’s young, dynamic congresswoman ascends to Mount Olympus?

It’s been a heck of a week for the Democrat representing our 2nd Congressional District.

Thanks to a dust-up between Gabbard, a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, and the DNC chair, Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz of Florida, Gabbard’s face has been all over cable and network news, online and in print.

Again.

This time it’s a she-said, she-said story:

The vice chair says the chair disinvited her from Tuesday’s presidential debate in Las Vegas because the vice chair wants more than just six debates and the chair doesn’t.

The chair says the vice chair is saying untrue things and that the vice chair cares more about the vice chair and “process” than the party’s great presidential candidates.

If things keep going at this pace, “General” Gabbard will be a vice presidential candidate in 2016, or defense secretary in 2017, or senator in 2019.

On Thursday, Gabbard’s position was bolstered greatly when another DNC vice chair accused Wasserman-Schultz of making “flat-out not true” statements about Gabbard, and questioned her political skills.

R. T. Rybak, the former mayor of Minneapolis who joined Gabbard last month in calling for more debates, said he had “serious questions” about Wasserman-Schultz’s suitability for the job, the New York Times reported.

Asked if she feels vindicated in the matter, Gabbard told me Thursday: “It was never an issue of vindication, it’s an issue of fact. It was never an issue of people making claims, it was about pointing out the truth. I feel strongly that integrity matters.”

Gabbard reiterated her position that an “exclusivity clause” the DNC instituted earlier this year — it says that candidates can’t participate in other debates aside from those approved by the DNC — is a policy of retribution.

“It weakens our party and our democracy,” she said.

Regardless of who’s telling the truth, Gabbard is winning the PR game big time, receiving gobs of sympathetic coverage in the centrist New York Times and on CNN, in the left-leaning Huffington Post and on MSNBC, and on the conservative Fox News and in Brietbart.

Also on Thursday, two papers with different political bents profiled Gabbard. The headlines speak volumes:

“Rep. Tulsi Gabbard: The Democrat that Republicans love and the DNC can’t control,” said the establishment Washington Post.

“Tulsi Gabbard’s revolt against Dem machine,” said the right-side Washington Examiner.

Gabbard shrugged off the headlines, saying she believes strongly in Democratic values of inclusion and celebrating freedoms that have been protected by men and women in uniform.

“This has nothing to do with politics, Democrats and Republicans,” she said, insisting that what she was actually doing was “taking a stand for truth.”

In addition to the debate over the debate, Gabbard was also asked by national media this week about President Barack Obama’s policy in Syria. Gabbard, the military veteran, is as harsh a critic of the White House as many Republican presidential candidates.

On top of all that, Gabbard this week was promoted from captain to the rank of major by the Hawaii Army National Guard.

If things keep going at this pace, “General” Gabbard will be a vice presidential candidate in 2016, or defense secretary in 2017, or senator in 2019.

Whether it will be as a Democrat or a Republican, we’ll have to find out.

Gabbard brushed off the speculation about her political future.

“There are so many serious issues facing us in Hawaii and across the country,” she said, “and that is what I am most focused on — how best to serve Hawaii and our country.”

I admire Gabbard’s meteoric rise. She is poised and articulate on TV, and it’s nice to see Hawaii getting some national plugs. Gabbard might even eclipse the renown of Hawaii’s best-known national figure, politically speaking: the late Dan Inouye.

Which isn’t to say that Gabbard has surpassed Inouye’s tremendous contributions. That’s a high hurdle.

With her greater national profile, it looks like the national political punditry is already casting a more critical eye toward her.

The WaPo article, for example, noted Civil Beat’s 2014 story on Gabbard skipping a Veterans Affairs hearing in Honolulu — one led by her colleague, Sen. Mazie Hirono, and attended by fellow veteran Mark Takai, then still a state legislator — to go surfing with a Yahoo News reporter.

“Gabbard’s office blamed traffic but was largely unapologetic about missing the hearing,” the Post observed.

The article also linked to Civil Beat’s 2012 story on how Gabbard’s politics on social issues have evolved from right to left. Meanwhile, the Washington Examiner linked to a lengthy, skeptical look at Gabbard in The Daily Kos.

@TulsiGabbard and @narendramodi #ModiInUSA pic.twitter.com/RKouKMMFAe

— Deepak (@intodust_in) September 28, 2015

There are grumblings, too, in political circles about how the only Hindu serving in the U.S. Congress seems to prefer the prime minister of India to the president of the United States.

It may not matter. Gabbard has consistently polled as the most popular member of Hawaii’s congressional delegation, and more popular than our governor and Honolulu’s mayor, too.

But, in her climb to the pinnacle, she might want to also keep an eye on where she came from and what local voters are thinking about her now.

One clue as to how she’s currently being perceived was revealed in one of the biggest hits at the Gridiron show in August, the biennial skewering of the high and not-so-mighty sponsored by the local chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists.

Starring former KITV anchor Mahealani Richardson playing Gabbard and singing along to Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass,” the parody nailed it:

I’m always ready for Blitzer, O’Reilly or Morning Joe,

But I might miss the hearing if my photo shoot is slow,

Because you know it’s all about my face, ’bout my face on cable,

It’s all about my face, ’bout my face on cable.

 Debbie Wasserman-Schultz would no doubt agree.