Not surprisingly, minutes after Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) delivered the GOP’s rebuttal to President Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress last week, he was met with vicious smears and incendiary diatribes from the national media and the Left.
At Twitter, where they’re supposedly so concerned about hate speech, “Uncle Tim” was trending for several hours. A New York Times headline read, “In G.O.P. Rebuttal, Tim Scott Accuses Biden of Pulling Nation ‘Further Apart.’ ”
Not to be outdone, the Washington Post titled a column “Sen. Tim Scott’s comments on race ignite a fiery debate.” The article went on to include this disparaging remark from Talbert Swan, the president of a NAACP chapter in Springfield, Mass.: “Trotting out sycophantic Black folks who will serve as apologists for white supremacy is a tried-and-true tactic that racists have used for centuries.”
The inflammatory attacks against Scott continued over the weekend with a since-deleted Facebook post from Lamar County Democratic Party Chair Gary O’Connor, who said of the senator’s speech, “I had hoped that Scott might show some common sense, but it seems clear he is little more than an oreo with no real principles.” Charles Blow, writing for the New York Times on Sunday, said, “I personally don’t make much of Scott’s ability to reason.”
What was Scott’s crime that led to such a “fiery debate”?
In his speech, he pointed out what is fairly obvious when it comes to race relations and the Left: “People are making money and gaining power by pretending we haven’t made any progress at all” and are “doubling down on the divisions we’ve worked so hard to heal.”
And on Monday, without sensing any irony in proving Scott’s point, the race-baiter Al Sharpton said, “I watched the rebuttal by the senator from South Carolina. Seems something awkward to me, where a white president talked about white supremacy and a Black senator said … America is not racist. Seemed a little strange to me.”
Sharpton was referring to the line from Scott’s speech that really hit a nerve on the left: “Hear me clearly: America is not a racist country.”
Yet a large portion of the Democratic Party platform is predicated on racial division and selling the lie that America will forever be “systemically racist.”
These belligerent and nonsensical remarks against Scott point to a much broader problem for the Democratic Party and for the Left. They understand that Scott is a threat to their slim grasp on power. They know that Scott, as a black Republican, will likely be able to bring out a large share of minority voters should he decide to run for president in 2024. They’re terrified of that possibility, and so they must resort to labeling him an “Uncle Tom” in an effort to delegitimize him.
And long before Scott’s speech, Democrats knew they may be in trouble with minority voters. During the 2020 election, former President Trump received the highest percentage of non-white voters for any Republican president since Richard Nixon in 1960. According to an Edison Research exit poll, Trump received 34 percent of the Asian vote, 32 percent of the Hispanic/Latino vote, and 12 percent of the black vote. He also received 36 percent of the vote from Latino men and 19 percent from black men. In other words, minority voters (particularly men) are fleeing the party of “tolerance” and “inclusion.”
According to census data released last week, minority voters significantly increased their voter turnout in the 2020 election. Asians provided the largest turnout increase, with 59 percent reporting that they voted in 2020, compared to 49 percent in 2016. Hispanic voters also increased their turnout from 54 percent in 2020, compared to 48 percent in 2016. And Blacks increased their turnout to 63 percent in 2020, compared to 60 percent in 2016. If the last presidential election is any indication, a higher minority turnout could mean more Republican votes.
And Scott is only helping to increase that number. His personal story about how his grandfather dropped out of school to pick cotton, and how he also almost didn’t finish school, is compelling and should resonate with a lot of Americans. More broadly, his message of extolling America’s virtues and greatness instead of tearing into our country provides a strong contrast to the Left’s message of racial division and hatred for our common values.
“Our best future won’t come from Washington schemes or socialist dreams,” Scott said. “It will come from you, the American people. Black, Hispanic, white and Asian. Republican and Democrat. Brave police officers and Black neighborhoods. We are not adversaries. We are family. We are all in this together.”
Unlike Biden, Scott delivered a unifying, pro-American message. For that the Left must cancel him.
David Keltz was a speechwriter for the Administrator at the U.S. General Services Administration from 2020–21 and is the author of the new book The Campaign of his Life and Media Bias in the Trump Presidency and the Extinction of the Conservative Millennial. He previously served as a White House Intern for Vice President Mike Pence. You can follow him on Twitter @david_keltz.
