Yesterday Tim Scott launched a presidential exploratory committee. That should have filled Blacks with pride. But nothing could have been further from the truth.
The reason is simple. Scott is little more than a right-wing Republican in Blackface.
Tim Scott launches presidential exploratory committee
I’ve been decrying his self-hating, hunky-dory politics for years. It began when Nikki Haley appointed Scott to the Senate in January 2013. But he still thinks a happy face is all one needs to deal with racism in America today.
Scott boasts about his family moving from “cotton to Congress” in one generation. He implies that Black Americans have nothing to complain about.
Now Black-American Scott is challenging Indian-American Haley for the Republican nomination. They were the first to announce presidential campaigns.
Except that their campaign rhetoric is making racist MAGA Republicans seem moderate. That’s why their presidential bids fill me with dread instead of pride.
What’s more, though, Haley must be ruing the day she appointed Scott to national prominence. The aphorism “no good deed goes unpunished” comes to mind.
Will Blacks support Scott’s presidential bid?
I fear Scott is just aping Alan Keyes. Keyes ran for president in 1996 and 2000. But, like Scott’s today, his campaign rhetoric back then made a mockery of his racial heritage.
That’s why Scott will be lucky if he gets more Black votes than Trump.
Why did Tim Scott launch his campaign at Fort Sumter?
That explains him choosing Fort Sumter to launch his presidential campaign. Most notably, Southern rebels forced Union soldiers to surrender there in 1861. That triggered the Civil War.
But this smacks of slavish pandering. I mean, South Carolina has many historic monuments. For example, he could have chosen the Reconstruction Era National Historical Park.
So why announce a presidential exploratory committee where pro-slavery rebels had their greatest triumph?
Only an unconscionable attempt to appeal to MAGA insurrectionists explains this. They, of course, are trying to make heroes of the Trumpian mob who stormed the US Capitol on Jan 6. And the symmetry between these MAGA insurrectionists and those Southern rebels speaks volumes.
Frankly, Scott himself is a “lost cause.”