By STEVE BRAWNER | For The Arkadelphian
If anyone needed further evidence that former President Trump will likely be the Republican Party nominee for president, Sen. Tom Cotton provided it Wednesday.
Arkansas’ junior senator became the latest in a growing line of Republican politicians to endorse Trump, which he did in a tweet.
If Cotton really wanted Trump to be president, he probably would have endorsed Trump before Wednesday, with the Iowa caucus less than two weeks away. Cotton’s hawkish, aggressive military views don’t always mesh with Trump’s America-first foreign policies. On Ukraine, Cotton is closer to President Biden than he is to Trump. And if a Democrat talked about Putin like Trump has done, Cotton would be highly critical.
In other ways, such as in their views regarding China and immigration, Cotton and Trump are very much aligned.
In his tweet, Cotton wrote that when Trump was president, the country was “safe, strong, and prosperous. The economy was booming, working-class wages were growing, our border was secure, and our enemies feared us.”
In contrast, he wrote, “With Joe Biden as president, everything has gone to hell: families can’t afford groceries, our border is wide open to a full-blown invasion, and our enemies are starting wars everywhere.”
With that, Cotton wrote, “I endorse President Trump and I look forward to working with him to win back the White House and the Senate so we can help hardworking Arkansans suffering from Joe Biden’s disastrous policies. It’s time to get our country back on track.”
That was pretty much it.
Cotton, like many elected Republicans, hasn’t spent much time talking about Trump these past three years. He has not repeated Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen. In fact, after the election, Cotton publicly announced that he would not object to certifying Biden’s victory. At the time, other senators were jumping on Trump’s election-denying train, so it may have been an important gesture.
But while Cotton is a combat veteran, he knows some fights aren’t worth taking on. As of Thursday, Trump led the Republican field with 62.7% support in the RealClearPolitics polling average. His closest competitors, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, each were polling at about 11%.
That’s not just a landslide. That’s barely even a contest. DeSantis, once seen by some as the Trump alternative, has been losing ground for months. Haley had seemed to be consolidating support among traditional Republicans. But there’s not enough of those, and then she had a bad week. She didn’t list slavery as a cause of the Civil War in response to a question, and then she backtracked with a statement. The entire episode made her look like a conventional politician, which Trump definitely is not.
In the midst of this environment, Cotton fell into line by becoming the 19th Republican senator to announce his support for Trump. On the other side of the Capitol, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise announced Tuesday he was supporting Trump. The next day, House Majority Leader Tom Emmer became the last remaining House Republican leader to endorse him.
In Arkansas, Gov. Sarah Huckabee has endorsed Trump, although somewhat later than might be expected considering she was his former press secretary. The other members of the state’s congressional delegation haven’t endorsed him or anyone. But the pressure to do so will increase – especially for Rep. Steve Womack, the only member who faces a Republican opponent in this year’s election.
Trump makes a lot of elected Republicans uncomfortable, the evidence being they don’t talk much about him. If they really believed that the 2020 election was stolen from their party, they would have spent the past three years shouting it from the rooftops.
I’m confident that many have been hoping that something would take him out of this year’s race, such as a major legal ruling. That hasn’t happened yet.
Meanwhile, no one has emerged during the primary process who might defeat him at the ballot box, and maybe no one could have. To the contrary, he’s only gotten stronger. He’s still leading across the country, including in those early states where the other candidates have concentrated their efforts.
For the moment, no one in the Republican Party seems able to beat him. So as the old saying goes, they’re joining him. Cotton was later than some to fall into line, but he will not be the last.
Steve Brawner is a syndicated columnist published in 15 outlets in Arkansas. Email him at brawnersteve@mac.com. Follow him on Twitter at @stevebrawner.