Rep. Tom Cotton (R-AR)
Arkansas Rep. Tom Cotton isn't backing away from the
false farm bill ad he's been running in his campaign for Senate. Though the Republican's claim that President Obama "hijacked the farm bill, turned it into a food stamp bill" has been
slammed by fact-checkers on the extremely reasonable grounds that nutrition assistance has been in the farm bill since the 1930s, Cotton is actually
increasing the size of the ad buy. Apparently Cotton wants to put more money into lying to Arkansas voters.
In a local interview this week, Cotton said he’s “proud” of his demonstrably dishonest commercial, adding that the fact-checkers didn’t spend time “growing up on a farm,” so he knows “a little bill more about farming than they do.”
Here's the thing. The ad wasn't actually about farming. This was not an ad in which Cotton stood up and proudly explained how to milk a cow, drawing on his hands-on knowledge. The ad was about the farm bill, and the long-time inclusion of nutrition assistance programs in the farm bill is a fact. It's part of the historical record. You can go back and read decades of farm bills and you will find nutrition assistance programs in them. Growing up on a farm does not in any way affect either those facts or your ability to learn about them.
Of course, the facts are not important to Cotton here. He needed this ad to get him out of trouble with Arkansas voters for his vote against the farm bill. It has successfully changed the subject from Cotton's vote against the farm bill to the history of the farm bill, and allowed Cotton to get repeatedly self-righteous about having grown up on a farm. That's mission accomplished for a Republican candidate with no loyalty to truth.