Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) officially threw his hat into the clown show of a Republican presidential primary on Monday, declaring himself “living proof that America is the land of opportunity and not a land of oppression” at a campaign kick-off event in Charleston.
“I’m the candidate the far left fears the most,” Scott said, adding: “When I pushed back on President Biden, they even called me the N-word.” (There is no record I can find of anyone on the left using that slur against Scott, though I will note that the right-wing crowd standing before him didn’t seem too bothered by the anecdote.)
Now that Scott has joined Donald Trump, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (who, incidentally, appointed him to replace Sen. Jim DeMint in 2012), and probably Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the race, we should have a little chat about some of the headlines he’s made during his time in office.
Obviously, Scott strongly opposes abortion rights: “If I were President of the United States I would literally sign the most conservative pro-life legislation they can get through Congress,” he said in a Monday interview. But Scott also doesn’t even seem to have any clue how long a pregnancy lasts—unless he really meant to suggest in August that Democrats are fighting for the right to abort 3-month-old infants. “If we don’t take back the Senate, Dems will pack the courts, give DC statehood, grant abortions up to 52 weeks, and Republicans will never win again,” he wrote in a fundraising email. (A human pregnancy lasts about 40 weeks.)
Scott is also an Evangelical Christian who’s preached abstinence until marriage throughout his career. When he first ran for Congress at age 30, he declared himself a proud virgin and said he follows the Ten Commandments; but after 16 years in public service, despite still being a bachelor at age 46, he admitted to reporter that he’d since abandoned his pledge of abstinence—both pieces of information about his sex life that no one really ever needed to know.
In 2022, Scott clashed with the two other Black members of the Senate on the issue of voting rights, arguing that he exists as evidence that that people of color are not being systematically disenfranchised in this country. It is “hard to deny progress,” he said, when two Black senators “come from the Southern states which people say are the places where African American votes are being suppressed.”
No one would deny that Scott has broken a barrier as the first Black Republican elected to the House from South Carolina. But his policies consistently, loyally support white patriarchal power.