The role of the anti-Obama has been pure gold in Arkansas since 2010.
It has delivered historic legislative and congressional inroads for Republicans. It has installed such GOP curiosities as Lt. Gov. Mark Darr and Secretary of State Mark Martin.
So Tom Cotton had it all going on.
He was the fully confirmed and bona fide anti-Obama to Mark Pryor, who—get a load of this—voted for the Affordable Care Act. That’s the new law to extend help to people in getting health insurance—help that Arkansas, a low-insured and unhealthy state, seems not remotely to want.
All Cotton needed until November 2014 was to rake in giant sums of right-wing money and say the words Pryor and Obamacare in rapid succession in every sentence. He couldn’t lose.
With a speed befitting his resume, he would be going to the U.S. Senate after but one term in Congress, in but his mid-30s, and as a slayer of giant tradition—of a Pryor, no less.
He would coast lightly while his opponent labored hard with Barack Obama strapped to his back.
But then we looked up the other day to behold that we had entered the twilight zone.
We saw that Cotton was now with, and that Pryor was now against, the hated Obama.
The political equation was flipped, inverted, jumbled.
How in the world?
Well, you see, Obama drew this “red line.” He declared that he wouldn’t stand for it if the Syrian government used chemical weapons on its people in the civil war.
So then it looked rather clearly that someone had indeed used gas on hundreds of Syrians, including children.
Obama decided he needed to blow up a few things in Syria. But he also decided he needed congressional approval.
Within a few days, Pryor and every other Arkansas delegate in Washington was on record opposing this unpopular president’s unpopular war—except, that is, for Cotton.
Young Tom had enlisted to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is a confirmed military interventionist and hawk. And he apparently is not a political game-player.
He was for regime change in Syria before it was cool, which it still isn’t.
If Cotton’s firm principles happen to coincide with a face-saving gesture by a president whom Cotton need only to oppose for political success, then the congressman’s principles and the president’s face-saving apparently will simply have to coincide.
On Saturday, Pryor issued a statement that he couldn’t support Obama’s war at this time because he didn’t believe the case for it had been made. On Sunday, Cotton appeared on the local Capitol View show on KARK-TV making that case vigorously: Our international credibility is at stake. Israel needs us to act. Iran wins if we don’t. The region and world will be better places if the United States, as only it can, enforces the notion that chemical weapons will not be tolerated.
Then—irony of ironies—the Washington Post published a little blog item shortly after noon on Monday. It revealed that a small group of Obama war intimates had just been seen entering the White House to plot strategy for winning congressional support for the force resolution.
The first name on the short list of White House insiders? That would be … wait for it … Tom Cotton.
You probably thought I was going to say that other Obama best friend forever, Nancy Pelosi.
I don’t listen much to the vast wasteland that is right-wing talk radio. But I know it has provided Cotton’s eden for months now as he has championed a litany of extreme right-wing economic and domestic positions—against food stamps, against disaster aid, against paying our debt, against government loans for college.
But on Monday I read from local Republican blogger Jason Tolbert that Cotton was getting pummeled on right-wing radio for attaching to Obama’s hip this way.
Pryor? He wasn’t saying anything. But he plainly was walking with a lighter load, his opponent having decided to strap the mighty burden to his back for a while.
A day when the Washington Post has Cotton at the White House and headlines about something other than Obamacare—that’s a good day in Arkansas for Mark Pryor.
Alas, the worst political sign for Cotton might be that I am beginning to sense and respect his honor and integrity, if none of his actual positions, save the one on Syria. Honor and integrity can get you beat.
So for the moment the political calculus in the Arkansas Senate race is as follows: The advantage in the race accrues to the candidate carrying the eventually lighter load—that is, the candidate whose alliance with Obama proves less consequential over time.
Will Syria—whatever occurs—prove a debacle? Will Obamacare prove a debacle? If yes for both, which will be the greater debacle?
If both are successful, then the advantage would seem to go to Cotton. That’s because a show of military force, or a threat thereof that produces a Russia-brokered solution, can produce instantly visible positive results.
But, regardless of the facts on Obamacare, it will take Arkansas voters years—well beyond November 2014—to admit anything good about it.
The right-wing base could more easily forgive Cotton for his alliance with Obama than they could credit Obama for a bold and successful threat or demonstration of military force.
So maybe Cotton will survive even while doing what he thinks is right, even to the point of letting his principles lead him to the Arkansas quicksand that exists all around Barack Obama.
If this Syrian thing gets settled by the Russian idea of Syria’s surrendering its chemical-weapon stockpile to international monitors, then the headlines on Oct. 1 will be all about the opening of the new Obamacare health insurance exchanges.
Order will have been restored to the business-as-usual eccentricities of Arkansas politics. Cotton’s campaign will be back on message, or mantra. Pryor will be back in quicksand. We will have returned from the twilight zone.
John Brummett’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.