Days before the crucial Republican primary in South Carolina in 2016, Sen. Tim Scott and then-Gov. Nikki Haley rallied for Sen. Marco Rubio in a desperate effort to slow down the Trump train. The image of the three young stars was seen as a glimpse into the future of the Republican Party that most insiders argued needed to appeal to a demographically changing American electorate.
Four years later, Scott and Haley appeared before the mostly virtual Republican convention to endorse President Trump, who had been nominated for a second term earlier in the day, unopposed. And Haley and Scott both felt the need to come to terms with elements of his message.
In her own speech, Haley recounted her time at the United Nations and framed it around the idea that “Donald Trump has always put America first.” She described the U.N. as a place “where dictators, murderers, and thieves denounce America and then put their hands out and demand that we pay their bills” and declared, “Well, President Trump put an end to all that.”
She touted his tearing up of the Iran deal, rebuilding of the U.S. alliance with Israel, and sanctions against North Korea.
In 2016, Haley invoked her background as the daughter of Indian immigrants in winding up to what would become a thinly veiled shot at Trump, observing, “During anxious times, it can be tempting to follow the siren call of the angriest voices. We must resist that temptation.”
On Monday night, however, Haley invoked the same story to make a point about the excesses of the cultural Left.
“There’s one more important area where our president is right,” she said. “He knows that political correctness and ‘cancel culture’ are dangerous and just plain wrong. In much of the Democratic Party, it’s now fashionable to say that America is racist. That is a lie. America is not a racist country. This is personal for me. I am the proud daughter of Indian immigrants. They came to America and settled in a small, southern town. My father wore a turban. My mother wore a sari. I was a brown girl in a black-and-white world. We faced discrimination and hardship. But my parents never gave in to grievance and hate.”
Scott, who told the story of how he overcame hardship to win a congressional seat against the son of Strom Thurmond in an overwhelmingly white district, and then eventually, a Senate seat, discussed how he worked with Trump to expand opportunity zones, school choice, and criminal justice reform. He pushed back against any idea of racial injustice in the country that does not recognize the progress made against it.
“We don’t give in to cancel culture or the radical, and factually baseless, belief that things are worse today than in the 1860s or the 1960s,” he said. “We have work to do … but I believe in the goodness of America … the promise that all men and all women are created equal.”
At the center of Trump’s brand of politics is a view about the centrality of culture — something Scott referred to when he said, “Make no mistake: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris want a cultural revolution. A fundamentally different America.”
He continued, “If we let [Biden-Harris], they will turn our country into a socialist utopia. And history has taught us that path only leads to pain and misery, especially for hard-working people hoping to rise. Instead, we must focus on the promise of the American journey. I know that journey well.”
He went on to recall, “My grandfather’s 99th birthday would have been tomorrow. Growing up, he had to cross the street if a white person was coming. He suffered the indignity of being forced out of school as a third grader to pick cotton and never learned to read or write. Yet, he lived long enough to see his grandson become the first African American to be elected to both the United States House and Senate” in South Carolina.
Liberals believe that their view of culture will lead to a society of more racial progress. But Scott put a different spin on it, warning that the left-wing vision of America would crush the American Dream.
Whether or not Trump pulls off another upset in November, or gets trounced, his influence on the Republican Party is likely to be felt well after he leaves office.
