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Is This 36-Year-Old Veteran the Future of the GOP?
National Journal ^ | 12/6/13 | Marin Cogan

Posted on 12/12/2013 11:19:24 AM PST by Baynative

HOT SPRINGS, Ark.—On a recent late-fall Saturday, Barbara Deuschle, a local restaurant owner, was recounting her first impression of her congressman, Tom Cotton, who is now running for the Senate. It was back in August 2011, just before the young Republican lawmaker formally announced his first campaign for the House, and Cotton and his dad came to a party meeting to get to know the faithful. Cotton was a 34-year-old political unknown who had recently lived in Washington. "When he just parachuted down into this district, nobody ever heard of him," she recalls. "I said, 'Who are you? We'd never heard of you before, where have you been? And what's this all about?' I grilled him for about 20 minutes."

There is little doubt that Cotton is winning conservative hearts and minds in Washington.

She began to piece together Cotton's personal history—born in Yell County; spent time in Cambridge, Mass., Iraq, Afghanistan, and Washington, including a stint in the Old Guard at Arlington National Cemetery. She had read recently that the guards who stand sentinel at the Tomb of the Unknowns are expected to have a 30-inch waist, and the diminutive Deuschle remembers gazing up at the 6-foot-5 veteran. "He's so tall. I'm looking about at his belly button. I'm seeing his belt buckle, this skinny, teeny little waist, and I said to him, 'Well, yeah, you still could be one of them,' " she recalls. "And he's so humble! And unassuming!" Deuschle was impressed, if a little suspicious. "I spent the next 10 months going around trying to figure out, 'What is wrong with him?' He was too good to be true."

(Excerpt) Read more at nationaljournal.com ...


TOPICS: Extended News; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: arkansas; cotton; gop; tomcotton
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With his sterling résumé—he has undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard and served in both of America's post-9/11 wars—Cotton seems like a throwback to another era, when military service and an Ivy League pedigree were common plot points on the road to elected office. In August, after just seven months in the House, Cotton announced he would challenge Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor for his seat next year. Pryor has deep ties here (his father, David Pryor, was also a senator and governor), but five years of Barack Obama's presidency has turned Arkansas into a hellscape for Democrats. In 2009, five of the state's six congressional members were Democrats; today, Pryor is the only one left.


"I tell 18-to-22-year-olds all the time that there's a lot of things you can do in your life that'll be a mistake,
but one thing that will never be a mistake is joining your country's military," he says."

1 posted on 12/12/2013 11:19:24 AM PST by Baynative
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To: Baynative

He’s a year older than me but has a much more impressive resume.

I’ve considered running for office, but I have no political-correctness filter. It’s for this reason I’ve not ascended to management in any of the jobs I’ve had. I don’t play the politics game very well, and if I was elected, I’d be the Congressman publicly upbraiding Nancy Pelosi on the House floor.

God bless this man’s future.


2 posted on 12/12/2013 11:24:55 AM PST by rarestia (It's time to water the Tree of Liberty.)
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To: rarestia
In his Crimson columns, Cotton fashioned himself a contrarian among a sea of liberals. He criticized college kids for drinking too much, Americans for indulging President Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and academia for worshipping at the altar of diversity. He could be pedantic: When the staff wrote an editorial worrying over the future of the Tasty, a sandwich shop in Harvard Square, Cotton wrote to dissent that the real reason to keep the shop open was not that it was the only 24-hour restaurant available, but because a "better approach is to defend The Tasty ... in the name of community good will and to advocate a capitalist approach to restaurants in the Square."

He wrote in favor of covenant marriage and against feminist opposition to it. In the op-ed, Cotton surveyed some of the women he went to college with about their greatest hopes and fears. The answers, he said, were uniform: Women most feared being divorced or left by their husbands, and most hoped for a happy life and marriage. He concluded: "Feminists who allegedly speak for women should attack divorce, not its effects. If men have easy access to divorce, many will choose it thoughtlessly. They may not gain true happiness with their new trophy wives, but they certainly will not slide into the material indigence and emotional misery that awaits most divorced women."

In his final column, Cotton reflected on his contrarian stance. "Only last weekend I was characterized (good-naturedly) as someone who would like to have lived a century or two ago. I suppose that comports with my acknowledged contrarian sympathies, though it is not simply correct," he wrote. "I probably appreciate the alien world revealed in Plato's dialogues and Jane Austen's novels more than most others do. But it is because of this appreciation, not in spite of it, that I also probably appreciate our world and the possibilities of it more than most others do."

3 posted on 12/12/2013 11:27:56 AM PST by Baynative (Wake me up early, be good to my dogs and teach my children to pray.)
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To: rarestia
I was pasting and put the wrong text in the reply to you.

I wanted to comment on you saying you'd be "publicly upbraiding Nancy Pelosi on the House floor", by saying that I am part of a growing number of Americans who are ready to throw out the "good friend across the aisle" rubbish and start fighting fire with fire.

4 posted on 12/12/2013 11:30:33 AM PST by Baynative (Wake me up early, be good to my dogs and teach my children to pray.)
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To: Baynative

I’d like to see a few FReepers vouch for his conservative bonafides. If he is truly conservative both socially and fiscally then we have a winner.

The Senate Conservatives Fund doesn’t say much except about him except for Dem. Pryor and the race there.
http://www.senateconservatives.com/site/races/2014/ar

“Arkansas is on our 2014 Priority List because it presents conservatives with a major pick-up opportunity. Incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Pryor is extremely vulnerable. Pryor has a liberal voting record and is running for re-election in a state President Obama lost badly in 2012.”


5 posted on 12/12/2013 11:32:02 AM PST by Jack Hydrazine (Pubbies = national collectivists; Dems = international collectivists; me = independent conservative)
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To: Baynative

I appreciate traditional, classic gender roles and ideals espoused in 19th century literature and history than I do what we’ve seen in the last 50 years since the 1960s.

The 1960s and 70s ushered in an era of hedonism and materialistic excess over the idea of self-reliance and determination.


6 posted on 12/12/2013 11:32:23 AM PST by rarestia (It's time to water the Tree of Liberty.)
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To: Baynative

He is a man in the mold of Burke. Lettered, reforming, conserving what we have inherited. I have heard him in an interview and he will be a jewel once gaining more promenance.


7 posted on 12/12/2013 11:34:47 AM PST by KC Burke (Officially since Memorial Day they are the Gimmie-crat Party.ha)
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To: rarestia

Wow !


8 posted on 12/12/2013 11:36:27 AM PST by Eric in the Ozarks ("Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth.")
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To: Baynative

Bookmark


9 posted on 12/12/2013 11:36:59 AM PST by Sergio (An object at rest cannot be stopped! - The Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight)
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To: Baynative

I want more representatives to remind publicly the rest of them for whom they are all working! That means getting in the face of other representatives in the spirit of debate. This namby pamby crap where they maintain decorum despite bald faced lies being spouted on the floor needs to go.

If a liberal is outright lying on the House floor, I’m going to stand up and call them out. Americans are fed up with this BS.


10 posted on 12/12/2013 11:37:05 AM PST by rarestia (It's time to water the Tree of Liberty.)
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To: Jack Hydrazine
ANY ARKANSAS FREEPERS LISTENING????

Let's hear some feedback - I've got my checkbook handy.

11 posted on 12/12/2013 11:39:54 AM PST by Baynative (Wake me up early, be good to my dogs and teach my children to pray.)
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To: holdonnow

What do you know of this man?


12 posted on 12/12/2013 11:41:15 AM PST by Baynative (Wake me up early, be good to my dogs and teach my children to pray.)
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To: Baynative
Women most feared being divorced or left by their husbands, and most hoped for a happy life and marriage. He concluded: "Feminists who allegedly speak for women should attack divorce, not its effects. If men have easy access to divorce, many will choose it thoughtlessly. They may not gain true happiness with their new trophy wives, but they certainly will not slide into the material indigence and emotional misery that awaits most divorced women."

Cotton for President.

13 posted on 12/12/2013 11:46:45 AM PST by Albion Wilde ("Remember... the first revolutionary was Satan."--Russian Orthodox Archpriest Dmitry Smirnov)
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To: Baynative

Bet she never spent that much time trying to figure out of a Democrat was the real deal or not.

Gag me...

“Hmmm, there’s got to be something I can trash this guy for!”

She may be a nice person. I don’t know. At some point this became annoying for me.


14 posted on 12/12/2013 11:51:16 AM PST by DoughtyOne (Zero = zero)
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To: Baynative
Well ...

I have no use whatsoever for his Ivy League education; indeed I hold that as a point against him. We've had enough of leftist lunatics 'educated' (or indoctrinated) in marxism at our nations self-so-called 'elite' universities in the marxist dominated north-east.

OTOH, he's a combat veteran, appears to have been a deliberate contrarian while at Harvard, and has a website that sort-of looks conservative. He speaks against 0bamacare; that's a good thing. Regrettably, it has no position statements. Where does Tom Cotton stand on abortion, national debt, deficit spending, unfunded entitlements, the right to keep and bear arms, growth of the regulatory state, growth of the welfare state, domestic energy production? His website gives no clue. Does anybody here know?

I like to support 'young', disruptive conservatives, and not just in my own State.

15 posted on 12/12/2013 11:58:14 AM PST by NorthMountain
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To: Baynative; All
Watch ; watch ; watch
16 posted on 12/12/2013 12:05:06 PM PST by ken5050 (I still miss Howlin)
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To: rarestia
I’d be the Congressman publicly upbraiding Nancy Pelosi on the House floor.

Hell, that would make you an Awesome congress person.
17 posted on 12/12/2013 12:07:56 PM PST by SoConPubbie (Mitt and Obama: They're the same poison, just a different potency)
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To: rarestia

I too hate PC, hate office politics and I make it known about my disgust with certain groups when it arises and it always does, I hate people who are offended by anything (including my bumper stickers) and I’m known sarcastically as Mr. Sensitivity.

I made it into the Program Management arena by surrounding myself with like minded individuals who get things done. When there’s a teleconference people don’t put me on speaker phone and they know a suit & tie at a meeting doesn’t make anyone smarter.

Bottom line is it’s possible so don’t give up. You do your job, do it well and you’ll be amazed at what “upper management” will tolerate.

FYI, I’m sure I’d be reprimanded in congress because I’d be screaming “YOU LIE” daily...


18 posted on 12/12/2013 12:09:36 PM PST by maddog55
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To: NorthMountain

Senator Ted Cruz is also a Harvard graduate and it doesn’t seem to have had a deleterious impact on him.


19 posted on 12/12/2013 12:10:32 PM PST by Howie66 (Molon Labe, Traitors!)
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To: Baynative

Here in Arkansas Cotton and Pryor are running their ads. Pryor has his Bible in his lap saying he is not ashamed to say that is what guides him. Cotton has his mother looking through family photos and pointing out her son’s military choices.


20 posted on 12/12/2013 12:10:36 PM PST by timeflies
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