Every four years, the commentariat writes a eulogy for the Republican Party. Maybe this time there is a temptation to take the obits more seriously, given former President Donald Trump’s invocation of a mob to storm Congress in January. But these obituaries never come out well for their authors.
Today, look to Sen. Tim Scott for evidence that the rumors of the Right’s demise are greatly exaggerated.
The South Carolinian’s response to President Joe Biden’s joint address to Congress rightly hammered Democrats. But along the way, he mapped out a blueprint for a Republican Party capable of uniting its traditional, more libertarian wing with the so-called national conservatism movement most closely associated with Trump.
The top priority of the conservative agenda, as Scott put it in his speech, is to reclaim the schools.
“Locking vulnerable kids out of the classroom is locking adults out of their future,” Scott said. Private schools, he pointed out, have been safely operating for months. Teachers unions are not just at war with parents when they keep the schools closed but at war with science as well.
Just as important to Scott as opening the schools is taking them back. “A hundred years ago, kids in classrooms were taught the color of their skin was their most important characteristic — and if they looked a certain way, they were inferior,” Scott said in a clear shot at critical race theory, which the Biden administration has recently embraced. “Today, kids again are being taught that the color of their skin defines them — and if they look a certain way, they’re an oppressor.”
Scott also crucially framed Biden’s “Family Plan” as an unprecedented expansion of government into our lives, businesses, and families.
“Even more taxing, even more spending, to put Washington even more in the middle of your life — from the cradle to college,” he said of the plan. “The beauty of the American dream is that families get to define it for themselves.”
This is a clear rebuke of policies that discriminate against those who cannot go or choose not to go to college and against parents who stay home part time or full time. Whatever sort of aid is given to families, Scott would much sooner see it allow them to decide how to use the money — for child care or to get by on one income and allow one parent to stay at home.
Scott saved his most righteous anger for the Left’s weaponization of race amid the murder of George Floyd. Scott, a black man, has voiced his own experiences of being unfairly targeted by police. He has encouraged his Republican colleagues to take racial issues more seriously, too. But last night, he rightly lambasted Democrats for their rank hypocrisy in blocking his police reform bill last year.
“I extended an olive branch,” Scott said. “I offered them amendments. But Democrats used the filibuster to block the debate from even happening. My friends across the aisle seemed to want the issue more than they wanted a solution.”
This, friends, is how you “fight,” as the NatCons love to say. Not by angrily tweeting about Dr. Seuss, but by forcing Democrats to show their hand. Scott did that last year and made the Democrats look like fools. Now humbled, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker is working with Scott to find a consensus bill.
The question of Biden’s agenda isn’t only about a leftist assault on religious liberty and traditional families. It isn’t only about a leftist assault on our nation’s creditworthiness and our grandchildren’s finances. It is about the goal of creating a bigger government for its own sake. This isn’t just “big government” in size, the way libertarians describe it, but in control as well — in changing how you live your life. In forcing Catholic doctors to perform abortions. In indoctrinating your children to hate their own country, and then making you pay for them to do it.
Perhaps most Democrats don’t even share these radical aims. But we’ve seen this story of power, high on its own supply, far too many times to play dumb about where it ends.
The question is, are there Republicans out there who can unite Trump’s movement with what came before it. There is a reason why Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has expertly woven both conservative factions into his rule, is regularly touted as the 2024 front-runner. But Scott showed last night that DeSantis isn’t the only one occupying this space.
Internal fighting doesn’t have to make a movement weaker. In any productive party, it ought to make it stronger. Scott’s speech serves as a decent road map showing where to start.
