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Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina (lastly) introduced his bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination on Monday.
Scott’s curiosity in working for president has been a subject of hypothesis ever since he vowed, in 2019, that 2022 could be his final Senate race and stated he wouldn’t run for governor of South Carolina. That is Washington we’re speaking about, so the thought of a senator willfully fading into obscurity — significantly, this senator, who has by no means seen a digital camera he didn’t like — appeared extremely unlikely.
The senator’s political profile is easy. His function within the Republican Get together — because the GOP’s solely Black senator — is a task generally performed by Black members of as we speak’s conservative motion: He’s largely used to rebut and downplay allegations of bigotry lobbed at Republicans over their agenda, replete with anti-Black, anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ and anti-woman rhetoric. You possibly can learn lots of my earlier posts about Black males tapped to run within the Republican Get together — from failed Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker to North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson to Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron — they usually’ll function an ideal primer for what you must count on from Scott’s marketing campaign.
He’s identified for political minstrelsy: embarrassing public acts meant to amuse white bigots and ameliorate their insurance policies within the public eye.
Scott has given us many examples of this up to now, however probably the most good one — a video — is quite troublesome to return throughout nowadays. And that’s as a result of Republicans seem to have tried to wash it from the web to the very best of their skill. And for good motive.
Again in 2017, as Republicans managed the White Home, the Senate and the Home of Representatives, they trotted out Scott to attempt to promote People on their regressive tax plan that immensely favored wealthy folks. Somebody appears to have had the good concept for Scott to look in a promotional video for Senate Republicans — and for him to deploy a catchy hashtag to misleadingly tout the tax plan as helpful to nonwealthy People.
What did they provide you with?
#KeepYoMoney
Sure, the one Black senator within the GOP rolled out this phrase, which was extensively interpreted as a gross effort to enchantment to Black folks by utilizing Ebonics. Republicans have been finally in a position to power the tax invoice via, however not earlier than Scott and Republicans have been roundly mocked for this crass effort at Black outreach.
Nowadays, discovering the unique video is just not straightforward: Senate Republicans deleted the embedded video from the tweet amid the criticism, and it doesn’t seem like on any official GOP web sites. However the picture will final without end:
Happily, although, you possibly can nonetheless try this “Desus & Mero” section, through which the hosts clown about Scott because the video performs.
You can even watch this different video of Scott awkwardly reciting the #KeepYoMoney line — flanked by a bunch of outdated, white lawmakers, who clearly get a kick out of listening to him ship it.
The cringe is robust with this one.
For me, #KeepYoMoney epitomizes the brand new presidential candidate. Severely, I hardly discuss with him as Tim Scott in dialog anymore. To me, he’ll at all times be Senator #KeepYoMoney of South Carolina.
Scott and the phrase are rather a lot alike: unserious, deceitful and deployed in service of the white conservative institution.