1. To give credit where credit is due, Tom Cotton really played the New York Times like suckers. He got them to valid his ideas as a legitimate part of the discourse and also gets now to play the free speech martyr to political correctness. He's a smart guy.
2. Cotton is worth thinking about in his own right: he's really vying for the role of being Trump 2.0 -- the smarter and more competent Trump who can win in 2024 & create a more durably authoritarian regime than Trump has managed.
3. Going back to 2016, I've been saying that Trump is not really the American Mussolini as some fear. Rather Trump is the Yankee Gabriele D’Annunzio, the feckless adventurer who shows the weaknesses of the system and thereby prefigures the Duce to come.
4. Cotton has some liabilities (he's as charismatic as a trip to the dentist). But he knows how to hit the Trumpian themes and he's better integrated into GOP policy/journalism (which means he won't have the staffing problems Trump has had). More here: thenation.com/article/politi…
