No, Virginia, Tom Cotton Is Not a Snowflake

Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton is getting some attention in the leftwing press in his homestate. It seems that a fringe group that styles themselves “Ozark Indivisible” is browned off that Senator Cotton doesn’t want to listen to them.

This is the story as related by the letter recipient.

Billy Fleming, a Times contributor, also sent me a copy of the image and an account from a person who reportedly received the letter. That person wrote:

I received a letter from the office of U.S. Senator Tom Cotton from Arkansas after calling and expressing my grave concerns over his actions and support of this administration’s agenda concerning a wide variety of subjects from the attack on our healthcare, DACA and immigration issues, to national security, to the rise of white nationalist fascism, to the environment, the gutting of our State Department, the attack on the free press…and similar deeply troubling actions & motives I’ve seen Senator Cotton support & condone. It was odd to receive this letter as I’ve called other Members of Congress to express my strong thoughts and opinions about their actions and thought this to be not only my duty as an American citizen but my First Amendment right granted all U.S. citizens by our U.S. Constitution, the foundation of our Democracy.

I believe if Tom Cotton’s office were to respond as to why they sent this letter, I think they just honestly don’t want to listen to any citizen’s opposing view or hear the numerous grave concerns U.S. citizens have about the serious & ongoing attack on our Democracy and past election cycle in which a foreign, hostile Russian government interfered, they don’t want U.S. citizens to call and speak their mind and truth in a very direct manner and they obviously don’t want to be held accountable for their words and actions while serving all the people in this nation. I may have used unprofessional and unbecoming language at times as the anxiety and stress of what I’m witnessing is at times too great a burden to control and I have vehemently expressed my righteous anger at Senator Cotton’s complicitness with this harmful regime.

Fleming said he knew several people who’d received such a letter…

Tommy Vietor, who used the mad skilz he acquired driving a campaign bus for Obama when he made his first Senate run to become assistant press secretary in the Obama White House, couldn’t resist

https://twitter.com/TVietor08/status/954016933224972288

The truth is a lot less interesting than a thin-skinned Senator ignoring troublesome constituents.

Letter went out in October. To one constituent, who called one of our 19 year old interns a c*** and threatened her physically. https://t.co/IJ2MT5luuM

— John Noonan (@noonanjo) January 18, 2018

Noonan works for Tom Cotton and I’ve know John since the heyday of milblogging around 2005-06. I followed up on these tweets offline to verify details.

All Congressional offices eventually have to send out letters like this. Usually it's something more politically innocuous (a constituent thinks they are owed money from the VA or IRS and are upset when investigation finds to the contrary). https://t.co/igWdWxRD1n

— John Noonan (@noonanjo) January 18, 2018

And Vietor seems to have done the right thing”

Thank you for retweeting this @TVietor08 https://t.co/e1Mtaaaqv9

— John Noonan (@noonanjo) January 18, 2018

One letter to a guy who was abusive and threatening to a teenage girl. A guy who should be horsewhipped at the tailgate of a Chevy Silverado down the main street of Little Rock. I just hope Cotton sent a copy of the letter, with the recipient’s address, to that girl’s father.