Run, Tom Cotton, run!

EVEN before Tom Cotton makes his campaign against Mark Pryor for the U.S. Senate official, he’s become the target of an impressive smear campaign. And it’s got money to spare. To mention just one six-figure item, a couple of high-powered Democratic front groups (Patriot Majority USA and Senate Majority PAC) have already spent a combined $308,000 on distorting every aspect of the Republican congressman’s record. And their accusations are being duly seconded by Mark Pryor’s senior flack, Jeff Weaver. So much for the naive assurance from the other senator from Arkansas, John Boozman, that Senator Pryor was going to run a nice clean campaign for re-election. His campaign is already up to its press releases in mud.

The object of this whole, well financed and highly dubious exercise? To paint the gentleman from the Fourth District of Arkansas as an ogre who takes food out of the mouths of babes, refuses to help people in need after a devastating storm, and shortchanges Arkansas farmers, students and anybody who gets a Social Security check or uses his Medicare card at the doctor’s office. That cardboard Tom Cotton could have just walked onstage in a Victorian melodrama twirling his moustache as he prepares to tie the fair damsel to the railroad tracks in the path of an oncoming train.

Behind that phony stereotype is the real Tom Cotton, a comer who’s already drawn national attention because he dares vote his convictions-a rare sight indeed in Washington-though he’s got to know his every stand for principle is going to be distorted by an incumbent hell-bent on re-election.And not very picky about the tactics he uses to achieve that aim. Indeed, those tactics are so low that, even this early in the race, they’ve already got a tinge of desperation about them. Because nobody who knows the real Tom Cotton would recognize this caricature Mark Pryor and Co. are painting of him.

TOM COTTON’S real sin? He refuses to be stampeded by every special interest with its snout in the public trough. Which takes guts. Because hell hath no fury like a Washington lobby furious at being denied its traditional entree to the public purse.

Yes, Tom Cotton refused to vote for a budget-busting package of political pork thinly disguised as aid to the victims of Hurricane Sandy last year. And, yes, this was the year he led the members of the House who finally separated farm subsidies from the food-stamp program, a cynical match put together decades ago in Congress to combine the votes of farm-state Republicans and urban Democrats for both programs without any real consideration of the merits of each.

It was only par for the low course that Tom Cotton’s efforts to save Social Security for future generations by reforming it would be depicted as some kind of plot against grandma. (As if bringing Social Security up to date-by, say, upping the retirement age in keeping with Americans’ increasing longevity-was just a greedy ploy.) Ditto, the congressman’s attempt to save Medicare. Or his opposition to Obamacare, a vast program that’s falling apart even before it’s in real operation.

And now Long Tall Tom has voted against extending an out-of-control student-loan program that has left many of its “beneficiaries” heavily indebted even before they’re out of school. These new “lower” interest rates just approved by Congress would be good for only one year; after that,they’re free to go sky-high. It’s a trap familiar to students by now. Just look at how much tuition rates have increased at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. According to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, tuition has almost doubled at the university since Mark Pryor was first elected to the Senate in 2002-from $4,456 a year to $7,818-and we have no reason to doubt that figure. And this program is supposed to help students? How? By making them slaves to debt?

The student-loan program’s real beneficiaries are the kind of colleges and universities eager to raise their tuition fees so they can hire more administrators at higher salaries-even as they skimp on faculty. After all, those people only do the actual teaching.

Forget the budget, the student-loan lobby says, this is for the kids! That line will be familiar to those who have followed this state’s official numbers racket known as the Arkansas Lottery. The lottery may further impoverish the poor and ignorant, but let’s not ask too many questions because . . . . It’s for the kids! Happily, the congressman from the Fourth District doesn’t think in snap phrases; he seems content to leave those to his critics.

FOR ALL these clear and courageous stands, Tom Cotton has been depicted as a modern-day Scrooge out to gouge the poor. Apparently there is no aspect of his record or character that these smear artists will not stoop to misrepresent. And the race for Senate hasn’t even formally begun. The real mudslide may still lie ahead. The old Democratic machine, still smarting from having lost its one-party monopoly in Arkansas, seems determined to win it back without feeling any particular need to tell the whole story behind these congressional votes.

This whole, comprehensive onslaught against Tom Cotton brings to mind the successful campaign to deny the most promising nominee to the federal judiciary since Richard Sheppard Arnold a seat on an important U.S. appellate court. Mark Pryor (along with Blanche Lincoln, now a deservedly former U.S. senator) played a key role in that low effort. By now many may have forgotten that nominee’s name. Miguel Estrada was just too bright, too conservative, too deserving and too Hispanic to get past a Democratic filibuster staged by the likes of Mark Pryor.

But if others have forgotten Miguel Estrada’s name, there are some of us who still remember it. And aren’t about to let Senator Pryor forget it. Especially when he pretends to be some kind of nice guy above the usual muck-and mire of Washington politics. As his low campaign against Tom Cotton demonstrates almost daily, he’s deep into it.

Word is that Congressman and hoping-to-be Senator Cotton plans to launch his formal campaign with an old-fashioned Arkansas barbecue in his hometown of Dardanelle this Tuesday. Which would be fitting because Mattie Ross, she of True Grit fame, always introduced herself as Mattie Ross from near Dardanelle in Yell County. She, too, ruffled a lot of feathers by telling it like it is. And never backing down.

High among Tom Cotton’s qualifications for the U.S. Senate is that, even in a short political career, he’s shown true grit. Agree or disagree with this still young man, there’s never been any doubt about where he stands. Which is a refreshing contrast with the incumbent, who too often tries to be all things to all voters, and winds up being nothing much to many of them.