Senator Mark Pryor (D., Ark.) declined to debate foreign-policy issues with Representative Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) when they meet next month.
“The campaign for Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor said last week that it had not rejected any topics from being included in the only debate agreed to so far by the senator and his Republican challenger, U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton,” a local media outlet reports. “But an email obtained by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on Tuesday showed that Pryor’s campaign had rejected the inclusion of foreign policy in the debate sponsored by the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce.”
In the e-mail, the debate moderator tells the Cotton campaign that “Pryor folks rejected adding ‘foreign policy’ to the list of topics for the Fayetteville Chamber debate.”
Cotton served as a U.S. Army officer in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee seized on the revelation, which comes as President Obama has been sending service-members to Iraq in response to the Islamic Stateterrorist group, by recalling Pryor had described the Iraq invasion as “a very important foreign-policy decision” during a 2002 campaign debate.
“After stressing that matters of foreign policy were ‘a very important issue’ in 2002, Mark Pryor is terrified to discuss the topic after supporting President Obama’s reckless agenda 90 percent of the time,” said NRSC Press Secretary Brook Hougesen. “Mark Pryor doesn’t want to discuss foreign policy because he cannot explain to Arkansas voters why he’s abandoned their concerns in favor of the Obama agenda. Voters want a credible and competent leader like Tom Cotton who understands the threats we face.”