This New York Times map showing where impact would be felt most from Senate Republican legislation to reduce Medicaid spending puts Arkansas at the bloodiest end of the spectrum.

Here’s the deeper analysis from which that map, and other illustrations, is drawn.

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So you can understand why Sen. John Boozman hasn’t yet stepped forward as an enthusiastic sponsor of legislation that would wreck the budget of his friend, Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson, with some coincidental collateral damage to Arkansas human beings numbering in the tens of thousands. Sen. Tom Cotton, a “social Darwinist” in the words of one of his former interns, thinks the poor deserve what they get and that too many of them are driving Cadillacs to grocery stores where they use Obamaphones to call a clerk inside to bring out a porterhouse in return for food stamps. But Cotton is also on the lookout for the main political chance as he plots a run for the White House, thus his uncharacteristic silence to date on legislation that he helped write in the company of 12 other white Republican men.

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