Tea Party Congressman echoed Senator Kelly Ayotte's (R. NH) in his debate against Senator Mark Pryor (D. AR):
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/...
REP. TOM COTTON: The fundamental responsibility of our government is to keep America safe. Barack Obama's indecision has made America face greater risks in the world. Unfortunately, Mark Pryor has been rubber-stamping that foreign policy. If we look at what's happening in the Islamic state, they are rampaging across the region. they are killing Americans, they are burying people alive. This is happening because Barack Obama failed to take the advice of his generals in 2011 when they asked for a small stay-behind force. Not like Iraq in 2006 when we were fighting the precursor group, but trainers, planners, advisers. Because of that decision, we lost our leverage with the Iraqi government. We called into question the trustworthyness of the United States among allies in the region, and we allowed al-Qaeda in the area to regroup and move to Syria and take advantage of the vacuum there. They are not just a terrorist group, they are a terrorist army. If we don't stop them, they are going to continue to rampage across the middle east, and they could attack us here in the United States.
Their own leader when he was released from captivity in the last decade of the war said "I will see you guys in New York." The president doesn't have an effective military strategy, a political strategy to get us beyond Nov. 4. What we need is to take it seriously. And no commander-in-chief would ever take any option off the ground, including troops on the ground. Because the Islamic state certainly isn't taking any options off the table. Barack Obama does that and Mark Pryor rubber stamps his failed policies. - Real Clear Politics, 10/13/14
Emphasis Mine.
Asshole. Pryor shot back though:
http://www.politico.com/...
Pryor thanked Cotton for his service and said he supports the airstrikes but then he attacked Cotton for wanting “more open-ended commitment in Iraq.”
“He’s for nation-building,”Pryor said. “He’s voted to spend billions of dollars in places like Afghanistan for schools, roads and hospitals. But he’s voted to cut schools, roads and hospitals here in Arkansas.” - Politico, 10/13/14
Pryor distanced himself from Obama but defend this vote:
The senator urged the audience to remember how bad things were before the Affordable Care Act, back when “the insurance companies held all the power.”
“I do support changes to the law. I do. But I don’t want to go back to those days,” he said. “A few weeks ago I was at church, and a guy came up to me and gave me a hug and said thank you for voting for the Affordable Care Act.”
Pryor said the man is diabetic and got coverage after going without insurance for 15 years.
“Congressman Cotton wants to take that away from him, and I don’t,” he said, noting that about 250,000 Arkansans have coverage because of the state’s private option or on the exchange.
Cotton told stories of people he’s met who lost their insurance. He said there were 50,000 health plans canceled in Arkansas and 4,000 cancellation notices for seniors with Medicare Advantage. He said he would “start over” on health reform.
Pryor responded by saying Cotton has no solution for those with preexisting conditions.
“I’m a cancer survivor,” he said. “I’ve been on the high-risk pool. … That’s just throwing sick people to the wolves, and I don’t support it.” - Politico, 10/13/14
And this was a great hit on Cotton's character:
Pryor attacked Cotton for conducting an internal poll just months after he was elected to the House to test how he’d fare against Pryor in the Senate race.
“He didn’t know even where the bathrooms were,” Pryor said.
Pryor maintained that electing Cotton would lead to more fiscal cliffs and government shutdowns. “Congressman, you don’t have the reputation, the ability or the desire to walk across the aisle to get things done in Washington,” he said. - Politico, 10/13/14
And of course he hit Cotton on voting against the farm bill:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
"He is the only member of the Arkansas delegation to do that," Pryor said. "Every indicator I have ever seen says we should vote for this because it is good for Arkansas."
"This is not just about the farmers," he continued. "This is about rural farmers, rural broadband. All those things are in the farm bill. We need the farm bill to pass so we can help Arkansas stay competitive in the global economy."
As its name suggests, the farm bill provides subsidies for farmers, but the legislation also includes food stamps for poor people, part of a decades-old deal between members of Congress representing rural and urban constituencies. Last year, Cotton and some conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives tried to undo this arrangement by approving separate farm and food stamps bills. The gambit failed, as Congress ultimately passed a more traditional farm bill earlier this year, one that had modest cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Cotton voted against the modified bill.
In a highly misleading TV ad released last month, Cotton defended his vote as standing up to President Barack Obama, who "hijacked the farm bill and turned it into a food stamp bill, with billions more in spending."
In Monday's debate, Pryor mentioned the "hijack" line and said he agreed with a recent editorial cartoon that depicted Cotton's ad winning a Nobel Prize for fiction. - Huffington Post, 10/13/14
Pryor did a good job fighting back but the way this debate was set was meant to work in Cotton's favor:
http://www.salon.com/...
Every time Cotton opened his mouth, he inevitably ended up denouncing Obama or Obamacare and pivoted immediately to claiming that Pryor supported the president 93 percent of the time. That, obviously, was Cotton’s strategy, and it was abetted a great deal by the awful format, in which Pryor, Cotton, and the two minor party candidates were shepherded rigidly from topic to topic, allowed infrequent rebuttals, and safeguarded from follow-up questions.
The shortcomings of this format became apparent early on when, in response to a question on the responsibility of candidates to be honest in their campaign advertisements, Cotton launched into his usual anti-Obama litany. The reporter who asked the question interrupted him: “Are you answering my question about what your job as a candidate is? Or are you just doing talking points?” That’s when the moderator jumped in and corrected the reporter for trying to make Cotton answer her question. “I have to allow him to go ahead,” he said, “because we have no provision for a follow-up question right away.” Thus, any danger of the debate actually getting interesting was quickly neutralized, and Cotton was free to launch right back into his talking points.
Speaking of those talking points, it’s pretty clear that Cotton has no problems telling lies or getting caught in them. On matters of basic policy, he was bending and fracturing the truth wherever he could, but he reserved some of his best untruths for the Affordable Care Act.
The ACA “is going to cost 2.5 million jobs,” Cotton said, re-upping a long-since debunked attack on the health reform law. “In Arkansas, we can expect premiums to increase by 138 percent,” Cotton said, referring to an analysis of state-by-state health insurance premiums conducted last November by a conservative think tank. (Premiums in Arkansas are actually expected to decline slightly, after years of increases.) “Sen. Pryor voted to cut Medicare by $700 billion to pay for Obamacare.” My god… are we still kicking around that hoary old chestnut?
Cotton also defended his vote against the farm bill, which is a pretty big deal in Arkansas, by claiming that he was just trying to shake up the status quo in Washington by decoupling the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (“food stamps”) from the agricultural legislation. “Sen. Pryor and Barack Obama insist on doing things the old way, keeping them combined. That’s the status quo,” Pryor said, saying they should be voted on separately because (he didn’t explain why). That’s a bit of a curious statement for Cotton to make, given that he just recently released an ad – an ad he insists is completely accurate – claiming that “President Obama hijacked the farm bill” and “turned it into a food stamp bill. So the “status quo” is also a “hijacking.” Feels totally consistent to me.
Unfortunately, when it came to lying like this, Cotton was at an advantage. The debate moderator had already made clear that questioners weren’t allowed to interrupt or challenge a candidate until the rules said they could, so it would have to fall to the other candidates to get the job done. But even then, the format worked in the dissembler’s favor. Cotton made it his business to attack Pryor and fire off misleading attacks on a policies Pryor supported, but Pryor never had the opportunity to respond immediately. Each candidate was made to speak in turn, going in the same order every time, which meant that Cotton would attack Pryor, then the Green Party candidate would get his turn to talk, and then Pryor could respond. - Salon, 10/14/14
It's going to be an intense race all the way until the end. Click here to donate and get involved with Pryor's campaign:
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