Think Trump is bad? President Tom Cotton would be even more terrifying

[turbinetree]

The Arkansas senator, who seems likely to run in 2024, is a dangerous extremist who appeals to the Republican establishment and Trump’s base


https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/09/think-donald-trump-is-bad-president-tom-cotton-would-be-even-more-terrifying#img-1

If you were going to write a novel about a bigoted southern Republican senator eager to turn the US into a military dictatorship, it would feel heavy-handed to name the protagonist Tom Cotton. The only thing less subtle, perhaps, would be calling him Tommy Plantation.

But this is real life, I am afraid, not a dystopian novel – and real life in 2020 does not seem interested in subtlety. Nor does Cotton. The Arkansas senator attracted ire last week for a column he wrote in the New York Times urging that the military be brought in to deal with protests against police brutality. “Send in the troops,” the headline bluntly declared. “The nation must restore order,” it continued. Nothing says “land of the free” like turning your troops on your own people.

Cotton wanted a coup and he got one. After widespread criticism of the article, including from Times journalists who argued it endangered the safety of black employees, the paper issued an apology; James Bennet, its editorial page editor, who had originally defended the decision to publish, resigned.

The turmoil seems to have played well for Cotton, who went on Fox News on Sunday to criticise the paper for caving to the “woke child mob” (which would make a great name for a punk band). According to a Washington Post reporter, Cotton has “quintupled his fundraising” since the fracas started. He has also garnered the public approval of Donald Trump.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/09/think-donald-trump-is-bad-president-tom-cotton-would-be-even-more-terrifying

-snip-

The idea of a President Cotton should terrify us all. Cotton has Trump’s appetite for authoritarianism and a similar disdain for a free press – in 2006, while serving in Iraq, Cotton wrote an open letter calling for the prosecution of two Times reporters who had broken a story about a secret government programme. He appeals to the Trump wing of the Republican party, but, crucially, he also has strong ties with the establishment. “How many guys in town can give a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations and also get kudos in the pages of Breitbart?” Steve Bannon asked the New Yorker in 2017. “The answer is, one guy.” That guy? Cotton.

We will eventually see the end of Trump’s presidency, but it will be far harder to get rid of Trumpism. The question is: how will Trump’s legacy evolve? Will it fade into the fringes or take on a more serious, more sinister, facade? Trumpism is largely defined by incompetence and farce, but Cotton could spin it into something a lot more terrifying and even more tragic.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

What is striking is this asshole Cotton a hates the press but he uses the press..................can't have it both ways.........and authoritarians like to have it both ways

[intrepidity]

1. I believe Trumpism will die with Trump

He is a horrifically unique phenomenon, and no amount of co-opting his beliefs or strategies will result in anywhere near a duplication of him. It will be an echo, at best.

When Trump finally disappears, this colossal nightmare will end.

[Amishman]

3. It won't die, it will just fade a bit

The Republicans are in for a nasty identity crisis once Trump is out; as the somewhat normal republicans like Romney, Hogan, DeWine, Baker, and Rubio try to retake control from the hard right ass end of their party.

[onetexan]

6. racism will not die. We can only hope we can force them back to the fringes they came from.

[Amishman]

7. I wasn't really thinking in terms of racism

I was more talking about general platform and approach

[Hortensis]

4. Trump is a symptom of the kleptocracy-serving authoritarianism

that's taken over the Republican Party over the past 30 years and is well on the way to taking over our nation -- not the cause.

Trump's been hard for them to control, but nevertheless the people who control the Republican Party have been able to continue accelerating their takeover through him. They've been choosing most judges, and those and other high political offices in the Trump admin have been packed with political agents of the kleptocrats, theocratic right and white nationalists. And of their "the enemy of our enemy is our friend" ally, Russia.

Cotton would lead the rest of the takeover and destruction of our democracy without Trump's mental disorder and with the dutiful and loyal support of most conservative voters, relieved that Trump's danger had been replaced by "responsible" Republican government.

“Maybe you do not care much about the future of the Republican Party. You should. Conservatives will always be with us. If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.” Ex-Republican David Frum

They have. The demographic progression of the growth of women and non-white voters made them realize their white power party could no longer win big elections in a democracy.

“What is spreading today is repressive kleptocracy, led by rulers motivated by greed rather than by the deranged idealism of Hitler or Stalin or Mao. Such rulers rely less on terror and more on rule twisting, the manipulation of information, and the co-option of elites. Their goal is self-enrichment; the corrosion of the rule of law is the necessary means. As a shrewd local observer explained to me on a visit to Hungary in early 2016, “The main benefit of controlling a modern bureaucratic state is not the power to persecute the innocent. It is the power to protect the guilty.” Ex-Republican David Frum

[DBoon]

2. Trump's only redeeming feature is his immense incompetence

Cotton has the ability to execute a right wing authoritarian coup very effectively.

If he is elected, we will see ourselves turn into Pinochet's Chile very quickly

[Hortensis]

5. Beautifully succinct. My guess is we'd follow the faux-democracy

pattern for some years while "the people" tried to convince themselves everything was still okay and their votes still counted for something.

Of course, their sacking of our nation and ruthless exploitation of everything from mental disorder in a presidential candidate, to assistance from enemy foreign states, to probably pandemic disease suggest we'd slide downhill into real poverty and oppression appallingly quickly. When it comes to the task of governing a healthy and prosperous nation, Trump's incompetence hardly outdoes that of others also only interested in growing their own power and prosperity.

And I assume that after the Democratic opposition was beat, the current alliance of kleptocrats, religious right theocrats, and white nationalists/whatevers would fall apart as they battled for power. Alliances of extremists and extreme power seekers never last.

[Aristus]

8. Please, dear God, let's not give them any ideas.

Don't you think they're already looking for someone who can out-stupid, out-squalid, out-idiot Trump? It's what they live for. It's what their entire party platform has been since Nixon resigned: "Who can we get who is worse than Nixon, and will upset the liberals?" And every GOP President since then has decreased in fitness for the job by an exponential rate. GHWB being the only exception in that he was an actual national hero, an accomplished public servant, and a mostly-competent administrator. But that's it.

The Republicans want the worst of the worst in the Oval Office. Let's not do their work for them...