Stumping Through Arkansas With Tom Terrific

As others before me have noted, Tom Cotton (R-AR) is just about the perfect Republican candidate for the 21st century, which should put us sane people on guard.  Cotton's a telegenic "aw, shucks" Arkansas farmboy, an Iraq-Afghanistan military vet, with a Harvard Law degree on top, who is more than willing to make an utter fool of himself saying any damned ignorant thing that will keep the GOP's fun-house audience in a state of arousal.

Guys like this (looking at you, Ted Cruz) always fascinate me because they are, by all standards, smart, disciplined and well-educated.  So how is it that they can allow themselves to be completely sucked in by crackpot gibberish that wouldn't fool most twelve year olds?  Where is their self-respect, if nothing else, when they stand up and soberly spout completely unfounded gibberish that 80% of the world is tittering over?

So far, during his brief tenure in Congress, Cotton has signed on with the "Hell, No! caucus" and shared these pearls of legislative wisdom:

"I don’t think Arkansas needs to bail out the Northeast,” Cotton once said of his vote against the Hurricane Sandy relief bill.

He has dismissed the potential for default if the debt ceiling was not raised as a desirable “short-term market correction.”

He said food stamps should be cut because too many recipients live high on the hog: “They have steak in their basket, and they have a brand-new iPhone, and they have a brand-new SUV.”

Plenty more below . . .