Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Come on, man.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

“But what about the lurkers?”

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

The republican caucus is already covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

You cannot shame the shameless.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Persians, Warriors & Philosopher-Kings

Persians, Warriors & Philosopher-Kings

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tom cotton at the waters edge danziger

(Jeff Danziger’s website)

*******
So Politico did their weekly survey of “a bipartisan group of key activists, operatives and thought leaders in Iowa and New Hampshire”:

One-third of Republican insiders believe that Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton and his GOP colleagues — including several potential presidential candidates — crossed the line when they published an open letter to Iranian leaders warning about a possible nuclear deal…

“The GOP letter — while sound in substance — caused the debate to shift from the administration’s wrongheadedness to the GOP’s tactics,” said a New Hampshire Republican, who — like all 92 respondents this week — completed the survey anonymously in order to speak candidly. “That’s not helpful.”…

Unless, of course, you’re Tom Cotton — or one of his backers. Paul Waldman, last week, in the Washington Post:

… On paper, Cotton looks like a dream politician with nowhere to go but up — Iraq veteran, Harvard Law School graduate, the youngest senator at 37. It’s only when you listen to him talk and hear what he believes that you come to realize he’s a complete crackpot. During the 2014 campaign he told voters that the Islamic State was working with Mexican drug cartels and would soon be coming to attack Arkansas. When he was still in the Army he wrote a letter to the New York Times saying that its editors should be “behind bars” because the paper published stories on the Bush administration’s program to disrupt terrorist groups’ finances (which George W. Bush himself had bragged about, but that’s another story).

While in the House in 2013, Cotton introduced an amendment to prosecute the relatives of those who violated sanctions on Iran, saying that his proposed penalties of up to 20 years in prison would “include a spouse and any relative to the third degree,” including “parents, children, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, grandparents, great grandparents, grandkids, great grandkids.” Forget about the fact that the Constitution expressly prohibits “corruption of blood” penalties — just consider that Cotton wanted to take someone who had violated sanctions and imprison their grandchildren. Needless to say, this deranged piece of legislation was too much even for Republicans to stomach, and it went nowhere…

Molly Ball, in the Atlantic, last September:

… Cotton, now a 37-year-old first-term congressman challenging Arkansas’ incumbent senior senator, Mark Pryor, has largely been defined by his résumé: the impressive credentials, from Harvard to the elite echelons of the military, and the conservative philosophy, illustrated by a record of votes in Congress that puts him on the rightward extreme of today’s Republican Party. He unites the factions of the Republican civil war: The establishment loves his background, while the Tea Party loves his ideological purity. The Weekly Standard’s editor, William Kristol, considers him one of the GOP’s most promising new faces; Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus calls him one of the party’s top recruits; conservative bloggers long to speed the day when he appears on a national ticket…

Cotton’s [Harvard] thesis fills in some of these gaps—in ways some might find disturbing. A cogent and tightly argued document, it reveals the depth and intellectual roots of his reverence for American traditions. It also reveals a contrarian devotion to some ideals that seem out of date today. Cotton insists that the Founders were wise not to put too much faith in democracy, because people are inherently selfish, narrow-minded, and impulsive. He defends the idea that the country must be led by a class of intellectually superior officeholders whose ambition sets them above other men. Though Cotton acknowledges that this might seem elitist, he derides the Federalists’ modern critics as mushy-headed and naive…

Men who seek national office, Cotton wrote in his thesis, are the most ambitious men, seeking the headiest sort of power over a nation’s commerce, finance, and affairs of state. Self-selection ensures that they have “a superior intelligence compared to the unambitious and to the lesser ambitious.” This does not necessarily mean that they are wise, he notes, but “it does imply some amount of sheer, raw brainpower. National officeholders will all possess something akin to shrewdness, cleverness, or perhaps even cunning.”…

Via Dan Drezner’s twitter feed, further explication of the philosopher would-be kings:

… So this [Kristol/Cotton] relationship, which must have opened up promising vistas for Cotton, goes back nearly a decade at least. And to think they were both mentored by Harvey Mansfield, one of this country’s most influential followers of Leo Strauss and author of the almost cartoonishly patriarchal 2006 polemic, Manliness (which provoked one hilarious New York Times reviewer to ask, among other questions, “when was the last time he [Mansfield] left the faculty club?”)

I mean, really, this vision of the older Kristol counseling the young soldier on his career path over drinks at the Mayflower Hotel—with its 1920s-era murals of the woodlands, the sea, and the ruins of Greek temples—sounds like a Straussian wet dream. Kristol, of course, is Strauss’s “philosopher” who cultivates and advises the “gentleman” about the ways of the world, knowing that, although he the philosopher lacks the charisma and the common touch to appeal to the masses, his eager (and manly) gentleman-protege may well become “prince” and thus the instrument for implementing his political agenda. No wonder the Weekly Standard’s man-crush on Cotton and Kristol current promotion of Cotton as the 2016 Republican vice-presidential candidate!

Of course, the backing of billionaires—like Adelson and Singer—doesn’t hurt in promoting the philosopher and the gentleman and their common priorities such as, notably, supporting Bibi and the Israeli Right and attacking Iran…

But then, nobody outside of the PNAC mindmeld would be dumb enough to believe this load of… oops:

Reader Interactions

69Comments

  1. 1.

    muddy

    “The alternative to a bad deal is a better deal,” the freshman senator insisted. “The Iranians frequently bluff to walk away from the table. If they bluff this week, call their bluff. Congress stands ready to impose much more severe sanctions.”

    “Moreover, we have to stand up to Iran’s attempts to drive for regional dominance,” he continued. “They already control Tehran and, increasingly, they control Damascus and Beirut and Baghdad. And now, Sana’a as well.”

    “They do all that without a nuclear weapon. What they would do without a nuclear weapon.”

    Found this quote from MTP on Raw Storyhttp://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/03/huh-tom-cotton-says-iran-must-be-stopped-because-they-already-control-tehran/

    Imagine it! Iran controls Tehran without using a nuclear weapon. How did things go so far?

  2. 2.

    Botsplainer

    By my count, 3 out of 4 Harvard Law grads are demented psychopaths with delusions of grandeur. For every Barack Obama, there’s a Hugh Hewitt, a Jerome Corsi, a Ted Cruz.

    Can we stop pretending that it is a special credential in and unto itself?

  3. 3.

    muddy

    And as to Erickson,

    “And so everything Barack Obama does domestically and in foreign policy is designed to humble the arrogant crackers who have always run the United States,” he said.

    “Barack Obama looks at the United States and sees bad and intends to fundamentally transform it into something good, and in so doing take us down a peg,” he added.

    He sees bad and wants to transform it into something good. How despicable! These nitwits seem to like the sound of their own voices, but don’t seem to listen to themselves or they’d be embarrassed.

  4. 4.

    Tree With Water

    Bravo to both Danziger and Balko.

    Their insights go a long way towards illustrating why the wheels will come off this clown show, and sooner rather than later.

  5. 5.

    Karmus

    Erick Erickson: Obama wants Iran nuclear deal so he can “humble the arrogant crackers”

    Speaking as a cracker myself, son of Erick ought to know whereof he speaks. About the crackers, that is; not so much Obama’s intentions.

  6. 6.

    MattF

    It does seem that the half-life of RWNJs is getting shorter. Cotton did manage to pull a fast one on the Senate Republicans, but my free advice is that he should think twice before putting that on his resume, particularly when he exits the Senate for greener pastures.

  7. 7.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    Rules – written or otherwise – are for everyone else, not Republicans. The party of personal responsibility never holds itself accountable for anything.

  8. 8.

    pluege

    On paper, Cotton looks like a dream politician with nowhere to go but up — Iraq veteran, Harvard Law School graduate …

    always puzzling how Harvard and other Ivy League gigs are part of dream republican resumes, but the same schools and experience make Democrats into elitist stooges. How is it the same institution has opposite effects according to whether the person is a republican or Democrat?

  9. 9.

    TerryC

    @Botsplainer: I turned down a free ride at Harvard for a Ph.D., no tuition, no fees, everything paid, because I visited incognito first. I said to my first wife, after a day of incognito’ “No way I’m going here, they’ll turn me into an asshole.”

  11. 11.

    Botsplainer

    @muddy:

    “And so everything Barack Obama does domestically and in foreign policy is designed to humble the arrogant crackers who have always run the United States,” he said.

    I’m failing to see a downside here.

    Jeremiah Wright was not incorrect insofar as a rational viewpoint among people of color is concerned.

  13. 13.

    Elmo

    @TerryC: the artist is limited by the clay, of course. Plenty of people go to Harvard and don’t end up being turned into assholes.

  15. 15.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @muddy: Iran’s status in the region is pretty much a direct result of American stupidity.

    Taking out Saddam was the greatest favor we could ever do for the Iranians.

  16. 16.

    muddy

    @Baud: I actually was a Tehrani for some years. No wonder I have such crazy political notions, like the president I was indoctrinated to Islam while there.

  17. 17.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Wait, Iran controls Iran? Next they’ll be telling us France controls Paris, England controls London, China controls Beijing, Canada controls Ottawa, Sotuh Korea controls Seoul, and Australia controls Canberra.

  20. 20.

    Botsplainer

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    This stupidity has Kristol’s moronic fingerprints all over it.

    Ask him which team is least likely to win the NCAA this year, and put it as the winner of your office bracket. He’s always wrong.

  23. 23.

    khead

    I had a vision last night.

    No, it wasn’t a vision that requires a $60 million dollar jet. My visions aren’t quite that grand. But my vision told me that if EACH OF YOU…. MY SPECIAL BALLOON JUICE FRIENDS! would bless Mrs. Khead and me with a donation of, say, $60 then we might could raise enough for a first-class flight and nice vacation at a good beach or maybe Las Vegas. We will even post pics on my Flickr account so that you may see the fruits of your donation blossom. TIA.

  25. 25.

    Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)

    @muddy:

    “And so everything Barack Obama does domestically and in foreign policy is designed to humble the arrogant crackers who have always run the United States,” he said.

    Bullshit. President Obama knows full well that NOTHING would humble those arrogant crackers.

  32. 32.

    JCJ

    Why is being an Iraq war veteran seen as a plus? I am always suspicious of anyone who enlisted after it became clear the US was going to attack Iraq. All of the rationale for that was clearly bullshit. Any politician who claims service in Iraq as a plus seems to expect me to ignore the fact that they could not see that.

  33. 33.

    Nutella

    Hmm, maybe what we really need is a law that says Cotton’s relatives can be committed to mental hospitals since he is obviously deranged. This

    would “include a spouse and any relative to the third degree,” including “parents, children, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces, grandparents, great grandparents, grandkids, great grandkids.”

    Sounds fair!

  34. 34.

    kindness

    The thing I’m most peeved about is that the MSM when discussing the letter/negotiations with Iran all take the stance that the proposed negotiation is bad for America. They all do. Funny, I have yet to see anything published about what the proposed treaty says. Of course if one is only willing to say the treaty is a success if Iran gives up all nuclear processing which is exactly what Fox.TeaHaddists say. When one side of the scale is unfettered lunacy it is hard to find ‘middle’ ground.

    Me, I want to be on good terms with Iran & Cuba. How do we include them?

  36. 36.

    gene108

    @Mike in NC:

    Cotton is the new Palin, thanks to comedian Billy Kristol.

    Palin was a fluke. A small town mayor, with more ambition than ability, who somehow managed to gain national prominence for whatever reason.

    Cotton has the where with all to have spent several years on the military, including tours in Iraq, graduate from law school, pass a state Bar Exam, and therefore is much more dangerous than Palin; he will do the hard work needed to advance his crazy-ass agenda and the people will love him for it.

  37. 37.

    Cervantes

    So this [Kristol/Cotton] relationship, which must have opened up promising vistas for Cotton, goes back nearly a decade at least.

    Is Lobe saying he was not aware of this connection until recently?

  38. 38.

    gene108

    @kindness:

    Of course if one is only willing to say the treaty is a success if Iran gives up all nuclear processing

    I don’t think Republicans really care if Iran gets the bomb. More nuclear armed states, especially those in the “Axis of Evil” just ratchets up the possibility of fear mongering to win elections to greater levels.

    Clinton had worked a deal for North Korea to halt its nuclear program.

    Bush & Co. decided Clinton was wrong for negotiating. Told North Korea to go fuck itself.

    In 2006, North Korea detonated a nuclear device.

    No Republican or right-winger, or damn near anyone else in the American establishment – from media to “though leaders” – seem to see this is a sign of failure from Republican foreign policy initiatives.

    Republicans are still seen as “very serious people” on matters of foreign policy, with equally valid – though different – points of view from Democrats.

    Results do not matter.

    Either a Democrat looks bad, because a rational outcome could not be achieved and we can all be bit safer or a Republican looks good, because a rational outcome was not achieved, and the fear mongering can be turned up past 11.

  39. 39.

    Tommy

    @gene108: Given Palin is shit all stupid. Turned my mom from a life long Republican to a Democratic. I am not sure there is a thing I agree with Cotton on but the man isn’t stupid. That does worry me.

  40. 40.

    gene108

    On a side note, I watched BBC World News on Thursday or Friday. They reported on ISIS / ISIL in Iraq and Syria. The entire news coverage was about how ISIS / ISIL was getting its ass kicked, losing territory, losing fighters and how the coalition of ME states, with some support from Western powers was winning.

    They had bits about Shia volunteers in Iraq signing up to fight for their country. About Iraq organizing a Christian militias to fight ISIS / ISIL.

    It was like dealing with an alternate universe, where everything that is bad here is good good there.

  42. 42.

    Citizen_X

    Kristol, of course, is Strauss’s “philosopher” who cultivates and advises the “gentleman” about the ways of the world, knowing that, although he the philosopher lacks the charisma and the common touch to appeal to the masses, his eager (and manly) gentleman-protege may well become “prince” and thus the instrument for implementing his political agenda.

    So, like the Spartan gay elder/protégé relationships, eh?

  43. 43.

    Tommy

    @Cervantes: His PAC called Emergency Committee for Israel gave $1 million to his campaign in the form of ads. What is going on here isn’t hard to figure out.

  44. 44.

    Woodrowfan

    Cotton is not stupid, but he is dangerous. He’s the type that would happily shove people into ovens and smile knowing he was doing God’s work…

  46. 46.

    PurpleGirl

    @Karmus: I think Erick son of Erick is really insulting Crackers. Taking the original use of Cracker as someone from Florida, I think he really means arrogant ‘White Trash’ as the lowest of the lows.

  47. 47.

    sharl

    Erick Erickson:

    Obama wants Iran nuclear deal so he can “humble the arrogant crackers”

    Hmm, just how would an “arrogant cracker” behave, anyway? Maybe something like this?:

    Is that the same Eric Erickson who quit his job as a Macon city councillor in mid-term, having failed to attend most of its meetings for the best part of a year?

    In combination with this maybe?:

    Erickson, whose Red State.com blog regularly rails against government spending, has continued to draw his City Council paycheck every two weeks, according to Human Resources Director Ben Hubbard…

    Hey, I’m just asking questions!!

  48. 48.

    J R in WV

    @khead:

    Sir,

    I am interested in hyour ideas, and wonder if you have a newsletter that I could subscripe to?

    I would do anything to increase the penetration of uyour thoughtfs across the political shphere!

    Thank you for yuer ideas!

    JV in Virginny.

  49. 49.

    Tommy

    @BillinGlendaleCA: Years ago my father send me a Powerpoint deck. So wish I would have saved it. As I have said here my father worked many years within the DoD and isn’t close to a liberal. But he hates war. I think that is because he knows what it is to fight one.

    In that Powerpoint slide show was the most stunning images. At the end, the final slide said “this is Iran.”

    Iran is not some backwards ass third world nation. In many places if I just dropped you in there you would not think you were in a major US metro area. The reason I said Iran isn’t a third world country is I think many in America think it is OK to bomb or invade a country when that is said about them. That is wrong on many levels, but even if that is what you think Iran isn’t that.

  51. 51.

    Howard Beale IV

    I have an idea: any standing member of the House or the Senate who votes for and passes any AUMF or Article of War, which is later signed into law by the President, is automatically drafted into military service 60 days after the signing, at which point special elections are held to fill their seats no less than 120 days after the bills signing.

    Now how’s that for accountability?

  52. 52.

    Thoughtful David

    @Howard Beale IV:
    Even the liberal Washington Post today had a very informative maps showing countries with nuclear weapons. Very surprisingly (not!–it’s the WaPo after all), according that map, Israel doesn’t have any.

  53. 53.

    El Caganer

    Tehran? I thought the order was first they’ll take Manhattan, then they’ll take Berlin.

  54. 54.

    Howard Beale IV

    @Thoughtful David: Not surprising, given that Israel never signed the NNPT Like all governments, they lie through their teeth to give a façade that they don’t have one.

    Pakistan, India, and North Korea never signed NNPT as well, and all of them have the bomb. Israel has stated they don’t want to be ‘the first’, but odds are very high they’ve had the bomb for decades.

  57. 57.

    stinger

    @PurpleGirl: I didn’t know that Floridians or “white trash” had ever “run the United States” to begin with. What the heck is he talking about?

  58. 58.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @JCJ: I think service in Iraq is a plus if you now work tirelessly to prevent the US from ever creating a clusterfuck like that again.

    If you think that the invasion of Iraq was a good idea, then that disqualifies you for politics, no matter what your military service, because it’s painfully obvious you learned nothing from it.

  59. 59.

    Kropadope

    @kindness:

    The thing I’m most peeved about is that the MSM when discussing the letter/negotiations with Iran all take the stance that the proposed negotiation is bad for America. They all do. Funny, I have yet to see anything published about what the proposed treaty says. Of course if one is only willing to say the treaty is a success if Iran gives up all nuclear processing which is exactly what Fox.TeaHaddists say. When one side of the scale is unfettered lunacy it is hard to find ‘middle’ ground.

    Me, I want to be on good terms with Iran & Cuba. How do we include them?

    That goddamned MSM lies because of it’s liberal bias. It supports the Republicans because they are radical liberals, as opposed to the Democrats, who are conservative liberals.

  62. 62.

    SRW1

    So Bloody Bill had a hand in that brilliant “It has come to our attention …” exercise. Wasn’t Bill chief of staff for VP ‘Tomatoe’ Quayle?

    I guess what we can deduce from Bill’s lack of familiarity with how a diplomatic exchange of messages is supposed to work, is that Bush I kept Qualie and his minions as far away as possible from mucking around in foreign relations. Guess George HW had pegged Bill and his abilities pretty well.

  63. 63.

    SRW1

    Men who seek national office, Cotton wrote in his thesis, are the most ambitious men, seeking the headiest sort of power over a nation’s commerce, finance, and affairs of state. Self-selection ensures that they have “a superior intelligence compared to the unambitious and to the lesser ambitious.”

    The Best and the Brightest, Conservative Edition.

  64. 64.

    Anne Laurie

    @SRW1:

    So Bloody Bill had a hand in that brilliant “It has come to our attention …” exercise. Wasn’t Bill chief of staff for VP ‘Tomatoe’ Quayle?

    Yep — Dan Quayle was supposed to be eye candy to attract female voters. “Butcher’s Bill” Kristol was also responsible for foisting Sarah Palin on McCain & the nation — he ‘discovered’ her during a NR cruise to Alaska.

    You’d think those previous “protegees” would’ve given a purportedly smart Harvard-educated guy like Tom Cotton pause, wouldn’t you?

  65. 65.

    Cervantes

    @Anne Laurie:

    I wouldn’t say that Kristol had much of a hand in Quayle’s selection as VP. The latter was alreadyrather a successful Indiana (and conservative) politician, the youngest person elected and re-elected to the U. S. Senate — all before Kristol ever worked for him.

    If you’re keeping track of Kristol’s protégés, a worthy endeavor, you could add to your list Alan Keyes instead.

  68. 68.

    brantl

    Needless to say, this deranged piece of legislation was too much even for Republicans to stomach, and it went nowhere

    Unfortunately, that is no longer needless to say, but it should be.

  69. 69.

    brantl

    Erick Erickson: Obama wants Iran nuclear deal so he can “humble the arrogant crackers”

    Sure, Wanker Wankerson would think that, he’s an arrogant cracker……

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