Stopping the next Tom Cotton stunt before it starts

by Steve Benen

The controversy surrounding the Senate Republicans’ letter to Iran has started to die down, but some congressional Democrats still aren’t happy about the fact that 47 GOP lawmakers tried to sabotage American foreign policy.

In fact, one Senate Democrat in particular came up with a creative response intended to stop stunts like these in the future. Zach Carter reports today:

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) delivered a pitch-perfect trolling lesson to the Senate on Wednesday, filing an amendment calling to defund “the purchase of stationary or electronic devices for the purpose of members of Congress or congressional staff communicating with foreign governments and undermining the role of the President as Head of State in international nuclear negotiations on behalf of the United States.”

In other words, Stabenow wants to defund Tom Cotton letters.

The full text of the Michigan Democrat’s amendment is online here (pdf).

Is there any chance Stabenow measure will actually pass? Well, no, and by all appearances, that’s not really the point. Instead, this is the senator’s not-so-subtle way of reminding Cotton and his cohorts that they made a very serious mistake and Democrats aren’t prepared to just forget all about it.

As of last week, some proponents of the sabotage letter tried to defend Republicans by saying they didn’t literally, physically put their message in an envelope before sending it off to Tehran. Note that Stabenow’s amendment includes “electronic devices.”

I’ll let you know the outcome of the vote, but there’s a very real chance that party leaders will limit the number of votes on amendments and Stabenow’s measure won’t actually reach the floor.