Coop Scoop: Trump and Scott Are Different. Scott is Black.

And not much else.

May 22, 2023

By Marc Cooper

So the latest Republican who will fail to win the White House and, almost certainly, fail to even get the nomination has just entered the presidential race promising –as expected—the opposite.  South Carolina’s junior senator, Tim Scott, has made it official after making it clear for the last year this is where he was headed.

Unlike, the Sultan of SantisStan who might declare any day now, Scott’s entrance to the race has been met with generally warm coverage.  Not at all like the tsunami of shit press that washed over Governor Meatball when  he started pretending he wasn’t a candidate when he clearly is.  Aways smiling, soft-spoke, often even rational, an African American with a speck of charisma, it’s easy to see why so many Trump-tired Republicans and even a lot of Never Trumper are talking him up trying to portray Scott as a sort of Black Mister Rogers.

Hey, I’m gonna concede one point to the Scott supporters.  Given the jamokes he’s running against, Scott is by far the  easiest to stomach.  He emits a definite sense of decency. He was originally appointed to office by then-Governor Nikki Haley who I cannot tolerate for more tan 45 seconds

You know, Albert Speer was also described as decent. I am not remotely suggesting Scott is a Nazi like Speer. And I am not suggesting that Trump is like Hitler.  I would, however like to point out that Tim Scott is every bit as close to, every bit a toady of, every bit an accomplice of Trump as Speer was of Hitler.

Scott is Black. Scott is rational. Scott can actually debate politely. He has also honed a hum dinger of stump speech detailing how he came from extreme southern poverty and yet through hard work and faith, of course, FAITH led him to success and that in this great country everybody can make it if they just try hard enough. The first part of his story cannot help but be operational. The crap about this is what America is about and you can do it too is just the usual warmed-over headless, ahistorical Horatio Algier claptrap from more innocent, and backward, times.

Scott is a one hundred percent MAGA stand-in.  OK. That’s a slight exaggeration. He has voted with Donald Trump only 97% of the time (not 100%), meaning that apart from skin color, there ain’t a whole lot difference between, say, Ted Cruz and Tim Scott when it comes to actual senate policy sausage making instead of performing on TV.

Scott is too cowardly, and this is a carefully chosen word, to even suggest any real criticism of the president he consistently voted with: Donald J. Trump. The most he can say is we need more optimism, less grievance (More Reaganisms).

Making his entry announcement, he gave no precise reason why Republicans should favor him over Trump except for the now usual MAGA boilerplate about how the Democrats are the Spawn of Satan. “I’m the candidate the far-left fears the most. You see, when I cut your taxes, they called me a prop. When I refunded the police, they called me a token. When I pushed back on President Biden, they even called me the ‘n-word,’” Scott said. “I disrupt their narrative. I threaten their control. The truth of my life disrupts their lies.”

Not sure who the “they” are but does it even matter?

Unlike the preachers of darkness like Trump and, say, Ted Cruz, Scott is upbeat, optimistic, friendly and approachable.

He also has a record of being a rock-ribbed Reaganite reactionary who doesn’t mind playing footsie now and then with the MAGA orangutans. Can you even imagine how a Scott administration would use its 4000 political appointments to keep the Beltway full of so many Trump flunkies, so many election deniers, so many Jan 6 sympathizers, so many swamp creatures and corporate agents. Just who do you think would be accompanying this dude into office?

As a member of the Charleston County Council in the late 90’s. Scott was a high profile evangelical zealot who insisted on nailing a version of the Ten Commandments on the council wall, until a court ordered it stricken.  As a council member he opposed a DOJ/ACLU supported reform to mitigate racial discrimination for local elections.  He is a supporter of South Carolina’s anti-union right to work laws.  He supports denying food stamps to recipients who qualify because a family member is on strike somewhere.  He opposes Obamacare, of course.  He wants to “reform” Medicare.  He’s all for deep water oil drilling.  He’s pro-life and opposes same-sex marriage.  And he’s totally on board with the immigration scare campaign now being conducted by the GOP.

He did work with Democrats on some minor police reform but earlier hopes that he would somehow lead any police accountability packages with teeth long ago evaporated.

Scott even took recent efforts to do something almost nobody has ever done: praising Donald Trump for his positive work on race [insert laugh track here]. And he said he would love to see a comparison of Biden and Trump positions on race as he is sure Trump would come out the winner. This perhaps could be sponsored by The Braille Institute?

There is absolutely nothing new or different about him except that he is a southern Black reactionary rather than a run of the mill southern White reactionary who is already starting to use all of the Trump-vetted extremist vocabulary warning about “radical Left Democrats” and about how Joe Biden represents a  mortal threat to America’s future.

It seems quite possible to me that Scott is going to do surprisingly well in the GOP primaries and that within a short period of time he might displace DaMeatball.  He’s going to do well because he’s going to get a much easier, if not a totally free, ride from the media.  Since the turbulent summer of 2020 with the killing of George Floyd, the sudden rise of BLM, the supposed (and mostly imaginary) “racial reckoning,” the bubbling controversy over wokeness, the Mainstream Media has gone into permanent crisis trying to adopt if not adapt a certain woke streak in its reporting: the creeping use of LatinX (rejected by 97% of Latinos), the absurd use of “marginalized communities”  when taken together Blacks, Latinos and other immigrants are actually a  majority of the country.  This suggests to me that there are going to be a whole lot of political reporters and even more editors who are going to go way, way out of their way to make sure they say nothing that might even be remotely interpreted as “offensive” in regard to Scott:  Like…he’s just one more cynical extreme right wing cut right out of the Reagan Era and currently making an attempt to be the human face of Trumpism.

And that’s why I think he stands very little chance of getting the nomination. Trumpism is not about being nice and fuzzy.  It’s about inflicting pain and vengeance.  While I have a very low opinion of Scott, I do not think that being an egregious asshole is his calling, but those are the assholes that Republican voters really like nowadays.   Let’s not forget that Trump seems on track to be indicted on myriad federal crimes by Labor day and while that might have a serious effect on the general election it’s not clear it will mean much in the primary where Trump appears to have a death grip on a brain dead Republican Party.  How Scott thinks he’s going to wrestle the nomination away from Trump by continuing to powder his ass is way beyond my range of abilities to understand.  Who exactly is Scott’s base in a political party that has become a naked vehicle for anti-democratic, racist policies?  Some analysts are saying that the huge and engaged Black electorate of his home state can be of help…except that 95% of them are Democrats and cannot vote in the GOP primary and would not in any case.  If his campaign makes it that far, it is totally plausible that Scott could win the Iowa caucuses early next year.  He is a darling of right wing evangelicals and Iowa is crawling with bible thumpers.  Beating Trump in Iowa would be big news…for a week or two when Trump wins everywhere else.  Just remember Presidents Robertson, Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and Rick Santorum. Reagan, Poppy Bush and Trump ‘16 all failed to win Iowa but won the White House.

Scott’s a happy warrior.   He has nothing to lose.  Hie Senate seat is good till 2026.  If he gets very lucky, who knows?  Maybe he will be a re-elected President Trump’s Secretary of HUD. Most likely he will finish as an asterisk. ++

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