Thursday, February 23, 2023
Political Mayhem Thursday: Tim Scott
It sure looks like South Carolina senator Tim Scott is running for President-- he is pictured about giving a speech in Des Moines, Iowa yesterday.
Unfortunately, it looks like he is distancing himself from Donald Trump while embracing Trump's theme of "Everything in the US is Awful and It's a Terrible Place (because, Biden)."
As the Republican field plumps out from the current contestants (Nikki Haley and Donald Trump), we can expect most of them to embrace this frame for their arguments-- at the debates, they should just let all of them cry at the same time for a while about sad and bad the United States is.
The bizarre thing is that Scott describes the country as a morass even as claiming that Americans are hooked on "the drug of victimhood and the narcotic of despair." It's a weird combination of messages. Mostly, I suppose, it is in the service of vilifying Democrats, who are blamed for all these things (whether they occurred in the Trump era or the Biden era or before, it doesn't seem to matter).
Tim Scott is someone-- unlike Trump-- who seems like he could deliver a more coherent and positive message even while criticizing the other side. It worked for Reagan, but that model does not seem to be in vogue these days....
