By Isaac Schorr
Wednesday, February 24, 2021
Senator Tom Cotton has plenty of competition when you
think of the forces driving the ideological development of today’s GOP.
Nebraska’s Ben Sasse has a Ph.D. and was a university president. Ted Cruz and
Mike Lee are whip-smart, well-spoken constitutional experts.
And yet, Cotton has begun to play a key role in shaping
the direction of the caucus, and he might have the brightest political future
of the bunch.
Cotton was never seen as an intellectual lightweight; his
Harvard Law degree made sure of that. But he didn’t enter the Senate with a
reputation as a wonk, either. He’d spent only seven months in the House of
Representatives when he announced his bid for a seat in the upper chamber in
August 2013, and he hadn’t held elected office before becoming a congressman.
Instead, it was his experience as an Army veteran of the wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq — where he attained the rank of captain — that fueled his political
rise and enabled him to build a reputation as a foreign-policy hawk.
Given that background, Cotton’s quiet success
establishing himself in a party running as fast as it can from the Bush
Doctrine seems all the more remarkable. His experience in the Middle East
resulted in no Tulsi Gabbard–like transformation into an isolationist. Indeed,
in September 2014, The Atlantic published a profile
of the soon-to-be senator that described Cotton and The Weekly Standard’s
Bill Kristol as “kindred spirits.” Kristol and the brand of third-wave
neoconservatism that he represents are anything but ascendant within the
American conservative coalition, yet Cotton’s hasn’t seen his political
fortunes dim in the slightest.
That’s not because Cotton has let his views “evolve,”
either; he’s still arguably the Senate’s most hawkish member. It’s because he’s
found a way to triangulate and make his message appeal to the broadest array of
factions within the fractious GOP coalition. For instance, instead of
emphasizing the theaters of war where he once fought, he has emphasized Iran —
an “axis of evil” member that 88 percent of
Americans continue to view unfavorably — and China, the authoritarian
superpower seeking to supplant the United States as soft global hegemon.
Cotton is certainly not unique among Republican
politicians in relentlessly attacking Iran and China, but he has made an effort
to own the issues these two countries raise by making them the focus of his
social-media messaging. He has also led the way in Congress on China in
particular. He has proposed
that Chinese-run Confucius Institutes on American campuses be forced to register
as foreign agents. He has urged
Speaker Nancy Pelosi to invite Taiwan’s president to address Congress. He has fought
to impose sanctions on Chinese officials responsible for carrying out the
Uyghur genocide. And he has been at the center of righteous efforts to hold
China responsible for unleashing the COVID-19 pandemic on the world.
That Cotton has been able to fashion his hawkish
foreign-policy instincts into a winning political message is impressive enough.
But the same deft touch has served him well in the domestic sphere, too. His
views on immigration are well suited to an increasingly restrictionist GOP, and
in 2017, he sponsored the RAISE Act, which would have cut the number of green
cards issued each year in half, ended the diversity lottery for visas, and
instituted a points-based immigration system. While it failed to pass, it
certainly placed him on the right side of the issue with the GOP base and
exhibited his willingness to go on the record with his positions not just by
issuing statements but by putting forward legislation.
That willingness has been further exemplified by his
joining with Mitt Romney to propose a forthcoming bill that will slowly raise
the federal minimum wage, pin it to inflation, and mandate that private
employers use the E-Verify system to ensure that they aren’t hiring illegal
immigrants over American citizens. This kind of proposal — meant to merge a
more populist, compassionate economic conservatism with a hard-line stance on
illegal immigration — makes Cotton uniquely positioned to succeed in the years
to come, given the direction of the party.
Cotton’s approach to procedural questions and navigating
the disastrous end to the Trump administration have proven effective as well.
He managed to navigate the sad aftermath of November’s election in a way that
generated positive publicity, making sure he was not seen as liable for the
violence. Yet he also remained in the good graces of the Trump-backing portion
of the Republican coalition — a very tough needle to thread.
First, when Trump urged GOP senators to object to the
election results and pressure Vice President Mike Pence to send contested
electors back to the states from which they came, in hopes of overturning Joe
Biden’s victory, Cotton refused. In a statement
three days before the election’s certification, he asserted that “Congress’s
power is limited to counting electoral votes submitted by the states.” It was
notable not because he was the only one to take this position, but because he
did so early, before any of the other ambitious young legislators with their
eyes on the presidency.
On January 6, Cotton’s instincts were vindicated, while
objecting senators such as Hawley and Cruz had to share blame for the Capitol
riot with Trump. Then, when Democrats moved forward with impeachment a week
later, Cotton immediately issued another statement condemning the riots but
also asserting that the Constitution would forbid the Senate from convicting a
president once he left office. This quickly became the stance around which most
Senate Republicans coalesced as the impeachment trial approached.
In what is likely to be a crowded 2024 field — so long as
Trump does not seek to reprise his role as standard-bearer — there are few
people better suited to please more Republican voters than Tom Cotton. He’s a
veteran and a China hawk. He has credibility on immigration and fiscal issues.
And he has not disqualified himself with either Trump fans or Trump skeptics.
The only problem is that in presidential races, personality traits matter, and
Cotton doesn’t have the natural charm of many of his rivals. Time will tell how
much that will cost him in the race for the White House. But no matter what
happens four years from now, Cotton has become a man Senate Republicans look to
for leadership on issues foreign, domestic, and internecine. And that’s no
small feat in itself.
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