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Why Tim Scott Will Never Be Trump's Running Mate [1]

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Date: 2023-08-17  

South Carolina Senator and lone black Republican senator Tim Scott is running for President, and appears to be in a surprisingly good position. For a non-MAGA-true-believer running in a party overrun by far-right populists, who hasn’t participated in any debates, and hasn’t seen real action on the campaign trial, his standing in the polls is commendable.

To be clear, Scott is no moderate - he’s very conservative on the most pressing issues of the day on both the fiscal and social angles - but he is not an anti-establishment populist like Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis. In most surveys, he garners somewhere in the ballpark of 10% of the Republican vote, and infrequently trades the position of 3rd and 4th place with former Vice President Mike Pence. It’s not the kind of position that lends itself to eventual victory, but for a race in which a former President is already eating up a guaranteed 40% (and possibly more) of the votes, it’s not the worst place to be.

Why is Tim Scott running?

Tim Scott’s “theory of candidacy,” if there is such a thing, relies on three lanes of possibility for claiming the Republican nomination, all of which are very, very narrow. The first, and most plausible, assumes the crash-and-burn of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. DeSantis made a terrific name for himself over the past 2 years as the seemingly competent chief right-wing culture warrior, fighting back against the “woke” corporations, the media, and COVID restrictions through actual governance of his state, rather than Donald Trump’s modus operandi of hogging media attention, but skimping on the actual policy victories. DeSantis’ 19-point re-election victory last November only solidified his appearance of strength among conservatives ready to move on from Trump, but not quite ready to feed the MAGA populism to the wolves.

But much like Scott Walker’s doomed run in 2016 to become the first President from the cheese-and-dairy state of Wisconsin, DeSantis might face an expiration date when exposed to the heat of a campaign. He simply lacks the basic personality skills to beat the headwinds of politician-skeptical conservative voters yearning for authenticity and strength. A candidate seeking to overthrow the de facto leader of a party has to be able to walk into barns, diners, and shops in the states of Iowa and New Hampshire, and be able to connect with voters, 1-on-1. DeSantis does’t know how to do that; he looks like a deer in the headlights when he has to actually interact with real human beings. Ron DeSantis might be able to maintain his (2nd place) lead in the polls before many voters tune into the race, but the Tim Scott theory of the case would say “just wait until the debate.” Scott has already cleared the threshold to appear on the debate stage with ease, and you can be sure that DeSantis will be the first warm body in his crosshairs, as well as for every other candidate trying to score higher than 3rd place before the Iowa Caucus. If Ron DeSantis does go down quickly and dramatically, Tim Scott will have his chance to claim the throne of 2nd place. And if Scott can keep it, it gives him a fighting chance against Trump.

DeSantis might just be the next iteration of Scott Walker.

There is a glaring flaw in this theory, however: As we have seen in the voluminous public polling of the GOP primary, when the choice is boiled down to just Trump and DeSantis, we find that Trump typically leads by 20-30 points, or about 65-35%. But when you replace Ron DeSantis’ name with Tim Scott as Trump’s main challenger, Trump’s lead jumps 10-20 points ahead to 70-30, or in the latest Harvard-Harris poll, 77-23%. That is a PROHIBITIVE lead for Trump, and largely debunks Scott’s theory of the case. Even if Scott could take down DeSantis and supplant him in 2nd place, it might not even be close to enough.

Tim Scott severely underperforms Ron DeSantis when pitted against former President Trump.

Tim Scott’s campaign is hedging its bets on a dark, but very true fact. Trump really could drop dead any day. He’s 77 years old, quite obviously obese, doesn’t eat well, is under tremendous mental stress, and drinks dozens of Diet Cokes a week, a soft drink that was recently found by the WHO to contain dangerous carcinogens. Trump is a walking health hazard, and if he does die, our politics will be upended overnight.

For the Democratic Party, it might be an open and honest question as to whether Joe Biden would, or should, run for re-election without his 78-year-old opponent in the race anymore.

But for the Republican Party, it will be immediate and uncontrolled chaos. In the eyes of establishment Republicans, this is the kind of chaos the party needs - just enough to force a change of heart and a new brand of leadership. The MAGA movement will likely be splintered and listless, searching for a new spiritual leader. For Tim Scott, it would represent his best opportunity to claim enough of the religious right, fiscal conservatives, and a sliver of MAGA to pull off the victory.

Third, Tim Scott could find a path to the nomination if Trump can’t get to a majority of delegates. If the former President’s support in the primary dropped down from its current 50-60% to something more like 35-40%, and the GOP can strategically target and attack Trump in the right primary states, Trump could finish with less than a majority of the delegates, forcing a contested convention. After the first ballot, the delegates will be free to roam between different candidates without any regard to the choice of the primary voters in their state.

Instead of Republican voters deciding the winner, the Republican party’s big-wigs would have the final say. For the Republican delegates at the convention, their top priority is not a populist agenda or sticking it to “the elites.” Their goal is simple: Win the election. In the eyes of many of the skilled political minds within the GOP, especially those most concerned with fiscal conservatism, and not racial or identity politics, a black candidate from the South who can put on a smiley face to their goals of tax cuts for the rich is just the perfect pick.

Tim Scott’s political operatives and people like me can list these three scenarios on paper - it’s easy to dream up scenarios in the protected bubble of one’s own thoughts - but in the real cut-throat world of Republican politics, these possibilities are so clearly unlikely that they are ridiculous. Miracles can happen - Scott may be running as a way to hedge on an unlikely series of events that land in his favor. If you had a 1% chance of winning the lottery simply by purchasing the ticket, wouldn’t you do it?

A Bid for the Vice Presidency

The real reason that Tim Scott is running for President is because he wants to be someone’s Vice President. The political calculus is simple and straight-forward: The Republicans are a party filled with racists and bigots, and conservatives are well aware that their political engine is fueled by racists and bigots. To absolve themselves of this label, they can nominate a minority candidate like Tim Scott to declare the Republican Party “racist-free,” receive a participation trophy from the press for trying, and thumb their nose at liberals who rightfully call the GOP out for trafficking in hatred against black people.

There’s absolutely no guarantees that putting Tim Scott on a Republican ticket would actually do any good for the Republicans. In his multiple bids for re-election to the Senate, Scott never actually won more than about 10% of the black vote. Despite what stereotypes Republicans want to impose, black voters are not magnetically drawn to candidates who have the same color of skin as themselves. Black voters, should conservatives choose to accept it or not, are actually human beings with real issues and concerns, and they view their votes as a means of electing someone who can make their lives a little better. They want someone who will protect their freedoms, protect their neighborhoods, and safeguard their place in American society. Tim Scott is black, but he has not been, and will never be, the choice of black voters in America, because he does not vote to protect their voting rights or protect them from police violence, and spends more time catering to the interests of corporations and far-right extremists.

However, I believe Donald Trump will never select Tim Scott to be his running mate; not because Trump is a racist, not because it would be politically unsound, but because Donald Trump can’t trust him. Scott reminds him too much of his last running mate:

Mike Pence, the Evangelical

Donald Trump picked Mike Pence in 2016 as his running mate for one reason: Mike Pence was trusted by evangelicals. Eight years into the Trump era, it’s hard to think of Donald Trump and evangelical voters in the same sentence as not belonging together - but this was simply not the case before the 2016 general election. In fact, Trump’s 2016 primary campaign nearly exploded on the launch pad because of evangelical voters. For months, Trump had led by a few percentage points in most polls of the Iowa Caucus, but Texas senator Ted Cruz scored a major upset victory in Iowa, scoring 27% of the vote to Trump’s 24%. A whopping 62% of caucus-goers considered themselves evangelical, and they supported Cruz by a 33-21 margin over Trump. Among non-evangelicals, Trump won 29%, Rubio received 26%, and Cruz only 19%.

Ted Cruz supporters celebrate his surprising win in the 2016 Iowa Caucus.

Trump’s wins in New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina would propel him to victory in the rest of the national primaries, but it was clear that Trump had a major vulnerability. Deeply religious folks across the country had serious concerns about voting for a candidate with a reputation for lying, stealing, cheating on his wives, and a lack of any substantive religious beliefs. As a way to placate their worries, he nominated Mike Pence, the deeply anti-abortion, evangelical governor of the socially conservative state of Indiana. And it worked. Evangelical voters held their nose, and propelled Trump to a victory in the electoral college.

Throughout the Trump presidency, Mike Pence remained loyal and subservient to Donald Trump, even through his most scandalous of times. When cabinet members within the Trump administration initially considered using the 25th amendment, Pence continually shut down those conversations, and then lied about their existence. When Donald Trump continually breached the basic norms of presidential power and democratic norms, such as obstructing the FBI, extorting the Ukrainians for political dirt, and spreading lies about COVID in order to cover for his incompetence, Pence never, ever wavered.

As loyal as Mike Pence was in serving Donald Trump, I believe it was ultimately his deep religious convictions that stopped him from attempting to steal the election by refusing to count the electoral votes on January 6th. Yes, it is true that many of the most religious politicians in America can usually find ways to excuse behavior that blatantly defies their religion, or use their religion as permission to engage in immoral behavior, but I would not the following facts: Mike Pence is so committed to his faith that he refuses to eat alone with other women or attend events that serve liquor without the presence of his wife. In addition, when it comes to the issue of abortion, it has been clear for a year that the issue of reproductive rights is resulting in mountains of electoral pain for conservatives across the country. But Mike Pence is so religious that he has not wavered from his commitment to a complete and total national abortion ban, even if 60% or more of the country vehemently opposes that position.

For politicians as religious devoted as Mike Pence, especially those who are conservative Republicans, there is a common belief that the words of the United States Constitution were written by God himself through the Founding Fathers themselves. When you think about it logically, this belief should be rejected as one of the most absurd historical claims, no matter whether you believe the words of the Bible verbatim, or reject its veracity completely. If God really wrote the Constitution, why did it only take four presidential election cycles before the electoral college under Article II, Section 1 completely broke down, and required the 12th amendment to fix it? Did God really write the words of the three-fifths clause, or the slave trade clause, or the fugitive slave clause? Did God create the Senate to be a body elected by the state legislatures, and then change his mind 125 years later?

The tragedy of this belief in the divine creation of the Constitution, rather than it being a conception of human ideas, is that it creates a permission structure for judicial originalism, and propagates our country’s stubborn refusal to amend the Constitution. If the words of the Constitution were conceived by religious, but ultimately, free-thinking men, then we do not have to consider the text of the Constitution to be sacred, but a series of guiding principles that we can twist and turn as our understanding of liberty and democracy evolves as we aim to create a “more perfect union.” We do not have to treat the Commerce Clause as it was written in 1787, because there was no such thing as an airport or the Internet.

But if we treat the Constitution like Mike Pence does, to change the Constitution would be equivalent to defying the word and will of God. If God wrote the 14th amendment in 1868, then to refuse to interpret the words of the 14th amendment as the text originally meant in the 19th century is to go against God; and therefore, our substantive due process rights from the 14th amendment such as the right to contraception, interracial marriage, abortion, and gay marriage all go against God’s intention of writing the 14th amendment in 1868.

As unfounded as Mike Pence’s belief in the divine creation of the Constitution is, one can draw a line of reasoning from it to his actions on January 6th. If God intended for the people to choose their President through the electoral college in a free and fair election, then for Mike Pence to defy the results of Joe Biden’s legitimate victory in the electoral college would be akin to defying the will of God for Joe Biden to be President. And for that reason, Mike Pence finally abandoned Donald Trump. But he paid the price for it - he will never be Vice President of the United States again.

Mike Pence put his belief in the divine creation of the Constitution over Donald Trump on January 6th.

Tim Scott’s Big Weakness

Tim Scott, much like Mike Pence, is a deeply devout Christian, so much that he was a self-proclaimed virgin at the age of 40, because he was unmarried, and the Bible commanded him to maintain his abstinence. Although it was discovered in 2012 that Tim Scott had broken his pledge of chastity, after he “had to pay back a conservative think tank for part of the three-day getaway because he invited Zee Patel, a lingerie store manager, to stay with him,” he still remains unmarried at the age of 57. Even though he is doing “not as well as [he] was then” in keeping his pledge for abstinence, Scott still proclaims that “At the end of the day, the Bible is very clear: abstinence until marriage. Not to do so is a sin.”

To be clear: It shouldn’t be any of our business how Tim Scott chooses to go about his personal life and his (lack of) relationships. I don’t know why he’s not married at 57, despite having the status as one of the most powerful people in the country and a seemingly fine ability to appear outwardly charming. Perhaps he isn’t emotionally or psychologically able to maintain close, long-term romantic relationships. It’s completely possible that Tim Scott is a closeted bisexual. Perhaps he really is so religiously devoted that he avoids sexual relationships. I don’t know - but it’s none of our business. However Tim Scott chooses to spend his personal life is not going to have any effect on how he would govern the country as President of the United States. Tim Scott is not a terrible candidate for the Presidency because he can’t get a girlfriend, but because he would cut taxes for the rich, eliminate government benefits for seniors and the needy, ban abortion, slash the rights of gay people, and appoint extremist conservatives to the Supreme Court.

But Donald Trump does not view politics, and more importantly, life, in the way I do, and unfortunately, he has control of who he picks as his running mate in 2024. Donald Trump sees people like Tim Scott as weak and unwilling to take what is supposedly theirs. Trump, on the other hand, takes what he wants because he feels he’s entitled to it; because “when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab 'em by the pussy.” And Trump views democracy the same way he views women: Sometimes that he can take and abuse for himself. If a devout Christian like Mike Pence was unwilling to steal the election for himself, how can Donald Trump trust his Vice President, Tim Scott, who has been unwilling to “take what he wants” with women for nearly four decades of his adult life, to do anything and everything that Trump demands? Unfortunately for Tim Scott, he is too weak in the eyes of Trump to be qualified to serve as a main character in a second Trump presidency.

Tim Scott will probably have a sufficient first-try at the Presidency; his clear devotion to a seemingly positive Christian faith will resonate well with some voters within Iowa’s large percentage of evangelicals. I think he’ll manage to score a formidable 3rd place in Iowa, behind DeSantis and Trump, but he’ll probably face a collapse in New Hampshire and Nevada, home to two very white and mostly irreligious bases of Republican voters. I think Scott will stay committed to remaining in the race until the voters of his home state of South Carolina get to weigh in, but Trump will continue his unbroken winning streak in the Palmetto state, beating 2nd place DeSantis for the fourth time in a row. After coming in 3rd in his own home state, Scott will drop out and find an excuse to endorse Trump to have a chance at earning the V.P. slot. Trump will dispatch DeSantis by over 30 points in Michigan, and sweep all 14 states on Super Tuesday.

Tim Scott’s Future in the GOP

Fortunately for Tim Scott, losing the 2024 primary will not be fatal to his career, unlike how it will be for Ron DeSantis. DeSantis is a term-limited governor of Florida, and receives his political strength from governing his state. He is not a performer like Donald Trump, who can garner media attention simply by saying inflammatory things on camera. DeSantis gets his claim to fame through things like his Don’t Say Gay bill, or his election integrity secret-police force. When he is forced out of office by term limits in 2027, he will be a politically worthless entity.

Scott, on the other hand, is a senator from South Carolina, and was re-elected in 2022, so his seat is safe no matter what. Scott has already said that he does not plan on seeking re-election to the Senate in 2028, despite the fact that he would only be in his early 60s, which implies to me that he could run for President again. Carrying through the gauntlet of a presidential campaign, especially a GOP primary filled with political landmines, will give Tim Scott a lot of experience in how to navigate the field on his next try. This will not be his last rodeo.

This article is sourced from my personal political blog, which can be found HERE (please feel free to subscribe to it for the price of $0)

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/17/2187804/-Why-Tim-Scott-Will-Never-Be-Trump-s-Running-Mate

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