Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton is being praised by conservatives for not taking the customary get-along-go-along tack for a new senator, while Democrats and some in his own party say he has been a divisive presence,
The Wall Street Journal reported.
Cotton helped spearhead the unprecedented
open letter to Iran signed by 46 other GOP colleagues cautioning the Islamic Republic that any deal its leaders arrive at with the Obama administration on its nuclear program will be subject to Senate oversight.
He has more recently sought to torpedo by parliamentary maneuver a bipartisan effort favored by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., to give Congress the power to review any nuclear deal with Iran.
And he effectively stymied Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's plans to make possible more amendment votes on the legislation, according to the Journal.
"If his goal was to allow a wide range of his colleagues to get their amendments heard, his action was directly counter to that goal," said Delaware Democratic Sen. Chris Coons, according to the Journal.
Conservatives have argued that the
approach Corker was taking would shift the onus to opponents of the bill because President Barack Obama would need just 40 votes to get the nuclear deal approved, while opponents would have to garner 67 votes to overturn it.
"I'm trying to stop a very dangerous nuclear deal with Iran," Cotton told the Journal. He said that "Democratic intransigence" — not his procedural move — was the real obstacle to amendments on the legislation.
Ken Cuccinelli of the Senate Conservatives Fund, which works to defeat Republicans it considers not conservative enough, praised Cotton. "Rather than folding to Democrats as many Republicans do, Sen. Cotton is fighting to protect our country and prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons," the Journal reported.
Cotton, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and trained as a lawyer at Harvard, is the youngest member of the Senate.
Arizona's senior Sen. John McCain, who is 78 and reportedly grooming the Senate's "next generation of national security experts," has praised Cotton for "his intelligence and his background and his willingness to take on tough issues,"
The Christian Science Monitor reported.
© 2026 Newsmax. All rights reserved.