The new Ted Cruz: How Tom Cotton made GOP’s showboat problem even worse

Tom Cotton's "open letter" stunt backfired on the GOP, but made him more popular than ever. Sound familiar?

SIMON MALOY

It’s been fun watching Republicans in Congress recalibrate their opinions of stripling senator Tom Cotton’s effort to derail nuclear negotiations with Iran. The junior senator from Arkansas persuaded 46 of his GOP colleagues to sign his “open letter” to the Iranian government informing them that any deal that doesn’t have Congress’ approval won’t outlast the Obama administration. The letter, which was not quite right on the merits, was an inflammatory gesture that has since blown up in the faces of the people who signed it. The whole debate over the negotiations has been reduced to a partisan slap fight, and the Republicans who are trying to do the actual legislative work to assert Congress’ authority are complaining that Cotton’s letter could undermine their own efforts.

Faced with this self-made setback, Republicans are trying to convince reporters that the letter was just one big joke that the Democrats took too seriously, or that the whole thing is somehow President Obama’s fault. John McCain, who signed the letter, now allows that it was probably a stupid thing to do, though he’s also convinced that Obama’s bears responsibility in the end because the president “established a poisoned environment here which sometimes causes us to react maybe in not the most effective fashion.”

The only person who is perfectly happy with how things have shaken out is Tom Cotton. He seems mainly concerned with promoting the Tom Cotton brand and/or starting a shooting war with Iran, and the letter achieved at least one of those goals. Since the letter went public, Cotton has been all over cable news and “fellow Republican senators are suddenly flocking to him for counsel on foreign policy,” per Politico. Cotton hasn’t actually done anything in a legislative capacity to prove his foreign policy acumen, and the things he says out loud about foreign affairs are completely bonkers, but he made some loud noises and he’s on TV a lot so he’s being treated as an expert.

Cotton clearly understands what it takes to get ahead in today’s Republican Congress. You don’t have to be an expert legislator. You don’t even have to be a competent legislator. Hell, you don’t even have to legislate. Literally all that is required is a willingness to be an anti-Obama shit-stirrer.

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http://www.salon.com/2015/03/12/the_new_ted_cruz_how_tom_cotton_made_gops_showboat_problem_even_worse/