Cotton’s post-Trump prospects

A cure for what ails the GOP — perhaps

Love him or hate him, Sen. Tom Cotton is well-poised to emerge from the GOP wreckage President Donald Trump will leave behind.

This column is a not a forecast or an endorsement. It is more like a scouting report.

Cotton supports the president. He also serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee. That committee appears to be the only body in Congress to have done its duty regarding foreign interference in our elections while working in a competent, bipartisan and patriotic fashion. The contrast is heightened by comparison to the House Intelligence Committee, hitherto led by incompetent flunky Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif.

Clearly Cotton is a junior member of the Senate committee. The real credit for the manner in which Senate Intelligence proceeds goes mostly to chairman Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., and ranking minority member Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va. So consider being on that committee to be something like wearing a raincoat in a mud storm. Cotton probably does more than just stand there, but in any case he will emerge cleaner than others who are outside that committee.

Cotton is subject to serious speculation about being the next secretary of defense. As a reporter, I will ask him if he is interested in the job the next time he comes to Northwest Arkansas. But today I am an opinion writer. Accepting that job — or any job — in this madhouse of an administration would be a severe mistake for Cotton. It would be a clear mistake for just about anyone.

Now let me insert a disclaimer. For all I know, the president could get re-elected in 2020. Never underestimate the ability of Democrats to ruin what should be a sure thing. So no, I am not expecting an abrupt departure by the president with Cotton or anybody else filling the gap. All I am saying is what was already obvious in this year’s elections in the U.S. House. There is a fragile, temporary alliance between Democrats and usually reliable Republican voters who are embarrassed by the president. As I have said before, those usually reliable Republican voters will snap right back to the GOP as soon as the party is no long led by someone they loathe. Cotton is just the kind of candidate they would snap back to.

As future presidential prospects go, potential GOP competitors who get a lot of attention tend to be what I call “redeemers.” Those are people like Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Gov. John Kasich of Ohio. They argue the party needs to, well, redeem itself after nominating Trump.

Pardon my cynicism, but I have covered politics long enough to know that any large body of voters does not like to be told they were dead wrong both politically and ethically. Few things are as unforgivable in a partisan primary as having been right. The most powerful thing one can tell a person is what he or she wants to hear. What the president’s supporters will want to hear once he is gone is that they were right all along on policy. They just picked the wrong guy to make it happen. Cotton can say that.

“Love means never having to say you are sorry” is a trite, false movie line. In politics, though, love is never telling the base it was wrong.

The things Cotton has done that make him enemies are things his own party will not hold against him.

Now there are probably plenty of others senators and such in other states who would make fine presidential candidates. That is where the “young man in uniform” factor comes in.

No bone spurs on Cotton; After the venal hustler from New York, the GOP could use a farm kid from Dardanelle who gave up years he could have spent in a lucrative law practice to serve his country in Iraq before going into elective office. As nakedly ambitious as Cotton is, his ambition is the kind that is willing to get shot at.

The president lacks any self-discipline or sense of self-sacrifice. Cotton is permeated with it.

As I have written before, the 2016 primary cleared the whole top layer of GOP presidential prospects. It sorted 17 candidates into two categories: Trump and those who failed to stop him. I would not look for any amazing political comebacks in 2020 or 2024.

The field is clear. That makes Cotton one to watch.