When the history of the Jan. 6 insurrection is written, three persons – U.S. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and Tom Cole – and many others will be at most asterisks in somebody’s book.
Greene and Boebert for being just plain ignorant, while Cole for simply being a brilliant yet fraudulent, phony and craven congressman.
In contrast several books will be written about a shy, soft spoken 26-year-old woman by the name of Cassidy Hutchinson, the top aide to another future asterisk only in the history books, Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows.
Of those people described above, I only personally know Tom Cole, Oklahoma’s 4th Congressional District representative. He comes from good parents – a state senator for mother and military man for father. He has Chickasaw blood in him; has an earned a PhD in English history; is married and has a son who I think is a school teacher. Tom is a hard worker; quite smart; well spoken; part owner of a consulting and polling firm; has been a state senator himself and Oklahoma Secretary of State for former Gov. Frank Keating; is politically scandal free; and after the November elections may end up being the Chairman of the powerful House Rules Committee.
He’s 73 years of age and obviously, based on the paragraph just above, has accomplished much to be proud of in his life. But there is just one weakness in his time in politics that erases all the positive contributions he has made: Tom Cole is a coward, a violator of his oath of office, a cold, cunning and calculating political hack who threw away, in one disgusting January evening, what could have been a life well served for his political party, his state and even his nation.
But no. By following freaks such as the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, QAnon morons and other groups formed, designed and organized to destroy America, my congressman decided the paint denoting power on his Capitol door was more important than the retention and protection of our U.S. Constitution.
What an embarrassment he has become to his tribe, his party, his state and nation, but especially to the once proud family name of Cole.
I knew his brother, mother, met his father, son and wife. Of course, those still alive within it will defend him, much to their own future shame and eventual sadness.
To make things even worse, Congressman Cole now mostly communicates with his constituents through tightly controlled, long distance verbal meetings, several of which I have signed up for and also put in my request to ask a question.
Never recognized once during the discussions but did get to hear endless drivel and ill-informed commentary about – for examples – the border blather, the struggles facing oil companies that can’t make money at $120 a barrel; how Joe Biden in about a year has destroyed America forever; why 12-year-old girls must carry a rapist’s inserted sperm to birth; how the wide distribution of guns designed only for killing other humans makes us safer; and why it is so productive and downright smart for our state to have Republicans such as himself filling all statewide elected slots and also dominate the Legislature, court houses and school boards.
He lauds the most corrupt governor in history, Kevin Stitt, and panders to every conspiracy theory and crackpot idea his callers bring up with nary a syllable of protest or correction.
Cole has become a shell of himself; an empty suit, full of platitudes and a smelly product most often found in feedlots. He can accurately quote Teddy Roosevelt, Churchill and Reagan without blushing but in reality is a worshipper of Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un and Xi Jinping because they share with him their most important goal in life: the accumulation and retention of power, regardless of the cost to themselves personally or their country in the short and long run.
It didn’t have to be this way. Had Cole abided by the Constitution that cold January night in 2021 and cast a yes vote to accept the decision of 82 million Americans and seat Joe Biden as the 46th president, his future would not have been just a corrupt footnote in history but perhaps a book’s chapter describing a statesman, not a spineless fraud who could read the Constitution but not abide by it.
Come home, Tom. Defend yourself if you can. I doubt it, but will give you credit for trying instead of discredit for hiding.
