At long last: marriage for Tim Scott.

Tonight, we promised to cherish and nourish each other and our marriage for the rest of our lives.

Mindy, you've made me the happiest man alive. I love you.

"So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate."

Matthew 19:6 pic.twitter.com/tRjlffL0EE

— Tim Scott (@votetimscott) August 4, 2024

 

Watch Republicans pounce on whatever meanness or dubiousness or racism this elicits.

"[Tim] Scott rarely mentioned a significant other during his decades in politics, and in the ’90s he declared himself a 'proud' adult virgin."

"When Scott launched his presidential campaign last spring, the media noted that he would be the first bachelor president since the 19th century. He tried to shut this down by alluding to a girlfriend in May, then sharing some details about his Christian, pickleball-playing partner with the Washington Post’s Ben Terris in September. This only raised suspicions that Scott had invented a ladyfriend for political purposes...."

From "Tim Scott’s Mystery Girlfriend Is Now His Fiancée" (New York Magazine).

“As a guy who is mostly an introvert and on the quiet side, having to have a conversation about the engagement is a little, you know, uncomfortable in a way, but it’s the most exciting thing I’ll do with my life besides making Jesus my Lord,” Scott said in an interview Sunday....

Why is Scott “having to have a conversation about the engagement” if it makes him uncomfortable?...

Is Scott running for VP? Is he in the running? I don't think Trump will pick him. Isn't he needed in the Senate? 

Meanwhile, yesterday, Doug Burgum: 1. Announced he's not running for a third term as Governor of North Dakota, and 2. Spoke at a Trump rally. But it can't be Burgum, can it? It's got to be one of the women, don't you think? Elise Stefanik, Kristi Noem, Sarah Huckabee Sanders....

"He who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favor from the Lord."

Said Tim Scott, quoting Proverbs 18:22, quoted in "South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott proposes to girlfriend who was revealed during his brief presidential run" (NY Post).

Tim Scott is 58 years old and has never been married. The engagement is politically convenient, and what is an engagement? The Bible doesn't say "He who finds a fiancée finds what is good and receives favor from the Lord." 

"If he is gay, I wish he'd been open about it all along, but what can he do now?"

"We're talking about a 57-year-old man who's promoted traditional sexual morality, not a younger man, like Pete Buttigieg, who is married and ostensibly monogamous."

That's the last paragraph of a post I wrote on September 12th, one of only 2 posts I've written during the 2023 presidential campaign that had the "Tim Scott" tag.

The other one was a September 28th post, published the morning after a GOP debate that I said I only watched for 3 minutes: "A moderator asked an absurdly long question about the auto strike, and then Tim Scott started talking and acted as though we were dumb to take something stupid he'd said literally. And I was gone."

And that's my answer to a question asked by rcocean in last night's open thread: "No post on Senator Tim Scott dropping out?"

What a terrible candidate! I was going to avert my eyes, but you asked. 

"The meandering and at times indecipherable debate seemed to validate former President Donald J. Trump’s decision to skip it."

"With only occasional exceptions, the Republicans onstage seemed content to bicker with one another. Most of them delivered the dominant front-runner only glancing blows and did little to upend the political reality that Mr. Trump is lapping all of his rivals — whose cumulative support in most national polls still doesn’t come close to the former president’s standing."

From "5 Takeaways From Another Trump-Free Republican Debate/The party’s front-runner took few hits as his rivals bickered, Nikki Haley delivered an assured performance, Tim Scott reasserted himself and Ron DeSantis took his first debate swipes at Trump" (NYT).

I only watched about 3 minutes of the debate. I don't have cable anymore, so I had to search for a live feed on YouTube, and I found something that had the debate on the left side of the screen and some guy with a headset on the right side who would mutter short comments now and then. The guy was ridiculous and distracting, but the debate seemed worse. A moderator asked an absurdly long question about the auto strike, and then Tim Scott started talking and acted as though we were dumb to take something stupid he'd said literally. And I was gone. 

"I only got married because I was 37 years old … and people would think I was queer if I weren’t married."

Said JFK, according to a woman who worked with him during his Senate years, quoted in the first paragraph of "Tim Scott has a woman problem/Like nagging parents, some Republicans want to know why the presidential candidate has never been married" (Boston Globe).

[Tim Scott] has never been married. There is no indication that he has plans to get married. And that’s a problem for some Republicans who, like nagging parents, want to know why Scott, 57, is unmarried.

That article was published a week ago. I ran across it this morning after doing a search prompted by this headline in today's Washington Post: "Tim Scott’s girlfriend/The unmarried Republican presidential candidate doesn’t like talking about his new relationship very much. But he is talking about it."

RFK Jr. is — by far — the most approved-of political figure in the United States right now.

 According to a new Harvard Harris poll:

 

By "approved-of," I mean the gap between "favorable and unfavorable." He's up 21 points, and the next highest is Musk, with 9 Tim Scott with 10 Ramaswamy with 16. 

Lots more insights to be gained from that list. For example, Trump has — by far — the highest "very favorable" number (though his "very unfavorable" is much higher (and yet one point lower that of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris).

Cornered by a direct question, Kamala Harris says "I don’t think America is a racist country."

But you have to hear her say it, so click through to "Kamala Harris: ‘I Don’t Think America is a Racist Country’ BUT…" (Mediaite).

As the "BUT" in the headline indicates, she moves on as quickly as possible to what amounts to an assertion that America is a racist country: "But we also do have to speak truth about the history of racism in our country, and its existence today." 

I'm sure there's a way to make a distinction to save her from the charge of incoherence. The term "racist country" can be defined narrowly so that a country with a lot of racism in it is still not a "racist country."

But it's the way she sounds saying it that gets me. The pitch changes and the laughing scream insincerity. [ADDED: Prompted by an emailer, I rewatched and saw that there was no laughing. There is some smiling, but also an effort to maintain a serious face. Not laughing.]

And here's the transcript of Tim Scott's speech from last night, in which he asserted "America is not a racist country." Context:

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. From colleges to corporations to our culture, people are making money and gaining power by pretending we haven't made any progress. By doubling down on the divisions we've worked so hard to heal. You know this stuff is wrong. Hear me clearly: America is not a racist country. It's backwards to fight discrimination with different discrimination. And it's wrong to try to use our painful past to dishonestly shut down debates in the present.

Aside from the "America is not a racist country" incantation that was foisted on Kamala Harris, it's easy to see that Harris and Scott differ about what to teach schoolchildren about America. Will it be love for country and optimism about their potential to flourish here or will it be critique and wariness?

***

There is no comments section anymore, but you can email me here. Unless you say otherwise, I will presume you'd enjoy an update to this post with a quote from your email.

Was there any discussion of "systemic racism" during the debate?

I need to read the transcript, in part because I want to do a word search, but in part because I, like so many of you, became distracted when a fly landed on Mike Pence's hair and stayed there for quite a long while. I thought it would never leave. Pence has helmet hair, so zero chance of feeling the weight or movement of the fly, and the fly barely moved. We talked about whether the fly was stuck or dead and whether it symbolized racism, being a discordant black dot on highly structured white hair. 

Here's the transcript. I see, searching it, that Kamala Harris never said "racist" or "racism," let alone "systemic" or "systemically." But Mike Pence said "systemically racist," and it is in this portion of the debate, where I was distracted by the fly in Mike Pence's hair. Let's work through this carefully, beginning with the question framed by the moderator, Susan Page. I've made some corrections to the transcript, which I'll note with boldface.

In March, Breonna Taylor, a 26 year old emergency room technician in Louisville was shot and killed after police officers executing a search warrant in a narcotics investigation, broke into her apartment. The police said they identified themselves. Taylor’s boyfriend said he didn’t hear them do that. He used a gun registered to him to fire a shot, which wounded an officer. The officers then fired more than 20 rounds into the apartment. They say they were acting in self-defense. None of them have been indicted in connection with her death. Senator Harris, in the case of Breonna Taylor was justice done?...

Notice that Page did not mention race at all. Taylor was identified by her age, her occupation, and her city. The question relating to indictment should be right in the zone where former prosecutor Kamala Harris can display the most expertise. Will she show respect for the process? Will she accuse the grand jury of racism and perhaps explain that white people carry racism into their decision-making whether they realize it or not? That is, will she demonstrate a belief in systemic racism or "implicit bias" and invite us to understand and share the belief in an enlightened new way (which is, I think, what the Black Lives Matter movement would like us to do)?

Harris answers:

"Senate Democrats on Wednesday blocked a Republican-drafted bill aimed at overhauling the nation’s policing practices..."

"... spelling a potential death knell to efforts at revisions at the federal level in an election year. In a 55-to-45 vote, the legislation written primarily by Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) failed to advance in the Senate, where it needed 60 votes to proceed. Most Democratic senators said the bill fell far short of what was needed to meaningfully change policing tactics and was beyond the point of salvaging. ‘The Republican majority proposed the legislative equivalent of a fig leaf — something that provides a little cover but no real change,' Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a floor speech Wednesday morning. 'The harsh fact of the matter is, the bill is so deeply, fundamentally and irrevocably flawed, it cannot serve as a useful starting point for meaningful reform.'... On one major point of dissension between the parties, the Republican bill leaves intact the 'qualified immunity' standard that Democrats want to erode to make it easier for law enforcement officials to be sued for misconduct.... In its veto threat, the Trump administration called the Democratic legislation an 'overbroad bill' that 'would deter good people from pursuing careers in law enforcement, weaken the ability of law enforcement agencies to reduce crime and keep our communities safe, and fail to bring law enforcement and the communities they serve closer together.'"

WaPo reports.

"Senate Republicans said they are working on a comprehensive proposal to respond to racially motivated police misconduct and other reforms to the criminal justice system."

"Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who is the only black Republican in the Senate, is leading the effort, GOP lawmakers said Tuesday. 'I’ve asked Sen. Tim Scott to lead a group working on proposals to allow us to respond to the obvious racial discrimination on full display on our television screens the last two weeks and what is the appropriate response of the federal government,' Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said" (Washington Examiner).

They asked their black guy. Is that racist?

Quite aside from this closeup, she was easy to spot in the crowd, and I noticed her clapping and standing a lot. It really made me like her!

Thanks Kyrsten! Working across the aisle on good ideas shouldn’t be such a foreign concept. https://t.co/wgb578vsvO

— Tim Scott (@SenatorTimScott) February 5, 2020

Nikki Haley is calling for the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the state capitol grounds.

Watch live now, here.

Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott are also taking this position.

UPDATE: Haley is giving recognition to the different "viewpoints" of the meaning of the flag, but at the state house, "It's time to move the flag from the capitol grounds." Huge applause. "Some people will see this as a sad moment... but this flag, while an integral part of our past, does not belong in our future.... By removing a symbol that divides us, we can move forward in harmony." She speaks of honoring the "9 souls... who are in Heaven." She stresses that it's South Carolina's decision, and that many people outside of the state have misunderstood what the flag means. It doesn't mean hate, she assures us, but it does cause "pain to so many," and that is the reason for banishing it from the state house grounds — though of course, as she mentions, individuals remain free to display the flag themselves.

Tim Scott "will become the only African-American currently serving in the Senate and the first black Republican to serve in the upper chamber since the 1970s."

Appointed by Nikki Haley to replace Jim DeMint.

Scott was first elected to the House in 2010, winning an open seat after defeating the son of longtime Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), the former segregationist who held the state’s other Senate seat for nearly 50 years until 2003.

He will become just the seventh African-American to serve in the Senate and the first black senator from the South since the 1880s.

Only three black senators have been voted into office by their constituents: Sen. Edward Brooke (R-Mass.), Sen. Carol Moseley Braun (D-Ill.) and now-President Barack Obama (D-Ill.). The others were elected by their state legislatures (before direct election of U.S. senators began) or appointed.

DeMint's term runs until 2016, but there will be a special election in 2014, so it remains to be seen whether this black Republican from the South can win a state-wide election.

ADDED: The linked WaPo article identifies Thurmond — "the former segregationist" — as a Republican, but when he was a big-time segregationist, he was a Democrat:

Thurmond represented South Carolina in the United States Senate from 1954 until 2003, at first as a Democrat and, after 1964, as a Republican....

In opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1957, he conducted the longest filibuster ever by a lone senator, at 24 hours and 18 minutes in length, nonstop. In the 1960s, he opposed the civil rights legislation of 1964 and 1965 to end segregation and enforce the voting rights of African-American citizens. He always insisted he had never been a racist, but was opposed to excessive federal authority.