I’m not surprised, TBH.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/12/politics/tim-scott-ends-presidential-campaign/index.html
My first reaction was, “Which one is Tim Scott?”
According to the CNN story, “‘Tim ran an optimistic, hopeful message — but that’s not where the Republican base is right now,’ a Republican official who supported Scott told CNN.” Let that be a lesson to Democrats who don’t understand why Donald Trump is still a viable candidate.
Mine was, “Who?”
Tim Scott is a black Republican. That gives him a curiosity factor and a defense for Republicans against charges the party and its voters are racist. He followed the glittering footsteps of Herman Cain and Ben Carson.
To be fair, Scott was a legitimate politician with a real record. As an actual politician with presumably standard politician instincts he must has understood the bind he was in. Imagine you’re running for President and find out that you’re running behind someone from your home state. Has anyone in history overcome those odds?
Of course Scott had no chance. He knew that at best he was running for Vice President. In political terms, however, he must have seen that the best candidate for that position is also the person from his home state who polled better than he did.
Who’s left? Ron Desantis: hard to imagine him hooking up with Trump. Chris Christie: in the race solely because he hates Trump. Vivek Ramaswamy: busy dodging the ten-foot-pole that nobody will touch him with. Nikki Haley: a Kamala Harris clone, perfect to put inside a box for four years and have her pop out for special occasions.
Or somebody walks invisibly among the crowd. Anything is possible. Except Tim Scott.
The Vice Presidential candidate doesn’t matter for the Republican side, and Trump won’t pick anyone who might possibly steal the spotlight from him even momentarily. Mike Pence was perfect because he was an obedient supplicant who literally disappeared into the background; look for some similarly milquetoast ‘running mate’ this time around. And this isn’t really unique to Trump; Tim Kaine was picked by the Clinton campaign for the same reason, and I’m sure John McCain went to his grave with regret for accepting a circus act like Sarah Palin whose antics overshadowed his message. Even Biden picked a candidate in Harris who checked a few important boxes but was unlikely to take the spotlight (given her primary performance) or have a strong independent standpoint like Stacey Abrams.
Tim Scott isn’t on the bench; he’s getting sent back down to the minors. He’s not even getting a nod for a presumptive Cabinet appointment.
Stranger
Not to go tremendously off topic, but Christie is pretty clearly in the race to also keep his media profile up and to keep cable networks and Sunday discussion shows hiring him. Christie has been out of elective office for years and he was one of the most unpopular politicians in the country when he left. Christie has to figure that, sooner or later, the producers of the programs he appears on were going to ask themselves “hey…why are we putting this guy on again?”
As an Iowan, it would be awfully hard to live here and not know who Tim Scott is, because he bought a LOT of TV ads.
I’m curious how many death threats he got for bringing his white girlfriend out on stage.
I’m curious if she’ll ever be seen or heard from again.
If she’s not a celeb in her own right, why would she be? What am I missing?
Well, he trotted her out as a display of his ardent heterosexuality, so I imagine she would be a part of future political events for quite some time to come.
If she were actually his GF, that is, and not an actress/model/friend playing a role for public consumption to combat rumors of Scott’s homosexuality.
Imagine that. A black guy doesn’t win in a primary race in a party in which its members either espouse or tolerate racism and expends lots of its energy in preventing black citizens from voting. What a shock. The only purpose Tim Scott has ever served in the GOP is to provide someone for them to point to and say “Lookee here! We got ourselves a gen-you-whine black dude in our party!”
Racism (and any other out group -ism) has always been just a tad subtler than that. There is the “one of the good ones” test that is always present. Once you pass that test, you are no longer a member of the reviled out group.
To whit the old trope of “some of my best friends are (fill in the blank)”! It’s not about how you think about and treat people that you know, it’s about how your think about and treat people that you don’t know.
Because he’s not afraid to call Trump a fraud, a coward and a criminal.
…Who?
On the Hacks on Tap podcast, Mike Murphy was a big early supporter of Tim Scott, but soured on him quickly because of terrible campaigning. Paraphrasing, but Scott was pitching himself hard as the evangelical candidate, and figured he’d score points just by saying the phrase “God’s green earth” multiple times whenever he was in a debate or at an event.
A God-botherer with regressive attitudes towards women’s heath, who claimed that racism was over because it didn’t bother him much, basically…can’t say I’m glad to see him go, not that it leaves anyone on the bench I’d want within a hundred miles of the White House…
I am. And I’ll be even happier when Nikki Haley quits the race.
Why? Because, superficially, Scott and Haley seem like reasonable, sane people, and the fact that they’re people of color could persuade some low-information swing state voters that they (Scott and Haley) would mitigate some of that bothersome GOP racism. Meanwhile, most of the people who would vote for any GOP candidate would vote for them anyway.
I want the GOP candidate to be as vile, racist and hateful as possible. If not Trump, someone with all his flaws. IOW, they should represent the true GOP, not some mythical big tent that might fool some of the people some of the time.
Typo on my part…meant to say I WAS glad to see him go. Doy.
He had to send things out to the end. If he stopped earlier the reporters would figure it out and scoop his announcement.