Tom Cotton: The Next Trump

Tom Cotton, for those that have luckily never heard of him, is an Arkansas Senator. Arkansas is a beautiful state, that is hampered by not being near much commerce, not having a great education system and proudly reveling in confederate nincompoopery.

And Tom Cotton has fully embraced Donald Trump's nastiness, propensity to disparage others and traffic in simple lies. But, as opposed to Donald Trump, Ton Cotton is smart as hell. This is a Harvard educated man who chooses to play to the populists, while taking huge funds from lobbyists.

His latest taking point, which plays wonderfully on Fox news, is to be a China basher. I think China is a cheater on the world stage and I am not making the claim they are good government. But, Tom's ideas are not based on reality, but on some fantasy where China is the villain in a giant black fu-man-chu mustache. His latest is that he is proposing that Chinese students no longer be allowed to be educated in the United States.

This is silly on a few levels. First, opening up our universities to Chinese (and all people) gives anyone who comes here a better view of the United States. We have educate people from nearly every country and it has helped relations with all of them (except Saudis - those guys hate us, kill people and fly planes into buildings!). Furthermore, a huge percentage of the foreign students stay int he United States, succeed and employ tons of people in the states. Finally, they are helping to pay for universities. Out of states students at public schools (like UCLA, Wisconsin, etc) pay very expensive tuition that keeps the prices down for in-state students.

Why pick the one area where things are working to complain?