Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton will chair the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence despite an unsuccessful campaign by some of his colleagues to guilt him into stepping aside in favor of Texas Senator John Cornyn.
According to Politico, an unidentified group of senators attempted to convince Cotton to allow Cornyn, who entered the Senate in 2002 and is 72, to leap over Cotton (who entered the Senate in 2014 and is 47) to chair the committee. The reasoning went that Cornyn has never chaired a committee, and this may be his last Senate term, while Cotton was elected chairman of the Senate Republican Caucus, the number three slot in the Senate Republican hierarchy, in November and should be satisfied with one plum position.
Cornyn served as the second-ranking Senate Republican and chaired the NRSC but, as he enters his 22nd year in the chamber, has yet to…
