In an easy and self-deprecating tone, Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) admitted he isn’t much of a handyman. And his 92-year-old grandfather has let him hear about it.
“You need to go back to pontificating,” Scott said his grandfather joked to him one day after trying — and failing — to hang a screen door back home in South Carolina. “You have no marketable skills.”
Maybe that’s a touch harsh. The South Carolina Republican said Thursday night that there are lessons for the GOP in the sort of blue-collar work his ‘granddaddy’ put him to — namely, assembling a plan and seeing it through to the end, and being smarter than using a screwdriver in a power-tool world.
Scott delivered the keynote address at the Washington, D.C. GOP’s annual Lincoln-Douglass Dinner, taking lessons he’s learned from his grandfather and applying them to the future of the Republican Party.
“One of the challenges I had with building the door, sometimes we have when it’s time to build a party or a government or a team: You have to have a vision for what it looks like to win,” Scott said, roaming on and off the stage inside a capacity room at the Hyatt Regency Washington just north of the Capitol. “That vision is not just about policy, but also the why. ‘Why is it important for us to stand strong on capitalism? Why is it important for us to encourage free markets?’ Free markets and capitalism have reduced poverty around the world like nothing else in existence.”
The man appointed to fill Sen. Jim DeMint’s seat earlier this year said that telling the success stories of these core economic values “redefines” the conversation Americans have about lifting families and growing the country. In order to tell those stories, Scott said, Republicans have to show up in a variety of places with the right tools — not a screwdriver when a power drill is necessary, and not a new door with the old hinges in place.
“When I show up with the right tools, I’m in a far better place, a far better position,” Scott said. “One of the most important tools we have is walking out of our comfort zone and into their comfort zone.”
As an example, Scott said he speaks at a different school in South Carolina every month, telling middle- and high-school students about simple economics and relating the lessons to their lives. In one instance, he asks those in the room who hold down part-time work what they would think if he took $3 each hour out of their pay rates of $8 or $9.
“‘You can’t take my money! I work hard for that money!'” many of the students react to Scott, he said. “I say, ‘That’s called the government.’ And they start getting a new picture on an old conversation of redistribution. Sometimes the tools that are at our disposal we overlook, because sometimes they don’t necessarily match our psyche — but they match our audience’s position on issues.”
When Republicans make such efforts to approach different constituencies — and make their cases without “demonizing the other side,” which Scott said is crucial — the GOP lawmaker said he has found there are more people who are right-of-mind than many realize.
“I think as we take the time to tell the story, you very consistently find that people are already conservatives.”
