Tim Scott, Republican senator from South Carolina, on June 24 delivered a scathing rebuke to Democrats who refused to back his police reform bill. Speaking on the Senate floor in what some could argue was the finest moment of his political career so far, Sen. Scott eloquently described everything that is wrong with the Democratic Party’s attitude toward and treatment of black Americans.
Scott is the only black Republican in the Senate. By contrast, the vastly more diverse Democratic Party has two black senators. Scott felt compelled to point out that fact on Twitter, back on June 10, in response to a torrent of racial abuse from leftists:
“And don’t throw ‘you’re the only black guy they know’ at me either. There are only two black Democratic Senators, stop pretending there’s some huge racial diversity gap in the Senate. Ask my Dem colleagues what their staffs look like ... I guarantee you won’t like the answer.”
Democrats Refuse to Take Yes for an Answer
Earlier in the day on Wednesday, Senate Democrats blocked a procedural vote on the reform bill. The vote in favor of moving the bill forward was 55-45, but 60 votes were needed to bring it up for debate.
Democrats have claimed reforms included in the bill do not go far enough, but Sen. Scott pointed out that this was not the real reason for Democrats’ refusal to allow the legislation to go forward. He had offered the opposition party the ability to introduce amendments for each of the 20 points raised by Democrats as lacking in the bill. In response to that, Democrats claimed that Senate Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) would never allow such a large number of amendments, but Scott debunked this claim. “I spoke to Mitch McConnell,” Scott said. “He said you can have 20 amendments. I told [Democrats] that. We went to a press conference yesterday, and we said an open process. They didn’t want an open process.”
The senator went on to point out that House Democrats refused to allow any Republican amendments in their own police reform bill, but he was not done there. He described how the Republican bill went further than the House legislation and why some of the items on the Democrat wish-list were entirely disingenuous. On the issue of police use of chokeholds, Scott noted that the Democrat bill bans the use of them only for federal agents but not for police departments – and the same with the use of no-knock warrants. “And then I read the [Democrat] bill. They don’t ban chokeholds on the local level, the state level. You know why? There’s this little thing called the Constitution. They can’t ban chokeholds.” Also noted by the senator was that the Democrat bill, as a penalty for non-compliance with suggested reforms, reduces funding to police agencies by 10%. The Republican bill reduces it by 20%.
Who is Responsible for Police Reform?
Expounding on the reform issues toward the end of his address, Sen. Scott touched upon the truth about chokeholds and who is responsible for their use. It is not just about the use of physical force, though: Scott exposed the hypocrisy of Democrats who are now screaming for the very police reforms they have had years to enact:
“You know, here’s the truth. In Detroit, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, all these cities could have banned chokeholds themselves. They could have increased the police reporting themselves. They could have more data information themselves. They could have de-escalation training themselves. They could have duty to intervene themselves, Minneapolis as well. All these communities have been run by Democrats for decades. Decades.”
The Myth of Trump the Racist
Exploding the Democrats’ narrative that President Trump is a racist who cares nothing for aiding non-white communities, the senator described his visit to the White House after the deadly 2017 confrontation over a Confederate statue in Charlottesville, Virginia. “Well, me and President Trump had a serious disagreement on his comments after Charlottesville,” Scott recounted, continuing:
“He being a person that I was not looking forward to having a conversation with, invited me to the oval office. I sat down there, and I said, what do you want to talk about? The president said, tell me about your perspective on racial history. I was stunned because if you know President Trump like I know President Trump, his love language is not words of encouragement. It just ain’t. It’s not. But he listened. And at the end of our conversation, he simply said, tell me how to help those I have offended.”
Certainly, Sen. Scott dismantled, piece by piece, the Democrats’ objection to the Senate police reform bill and listed how the Republican Party, in the era of Trump, has improved the lot of the black community. He went much further, though. For too long, Republicans have been either too polite or too cowardly to point out what every black conservative in this country knows. Democrats refuse to recognize the efforts of any Republican – regardless of race – to do anything which might make life better for black people:
“I finally realized what the problem is, Mr. President. The actual problem is not what is being offered. It is who is offering it. Took me a long time to figure out the most obvious thing in the room. It’s not the what … As a black man, I get the who being the problem.”
Taking Blacks for Granted
Senator Scott happens to be a member of the one group of people most despised by Democrats and by the political left in general: black conservatives. Scott is now on the receiving end of so much racial abuse and so many threats that even CNN and other left-wing media outlets are finding the issue hard to ignore. Those threats and slurs are hardly likely to be coming from conservatives, among whom the South Carolina senator is very popular.
“Tim Scott, my crosshairs on my rifle are going to be pointed right at your forehead and blow your black (inaudible) dumba-- away,” CNN reports one of the many recent voicemails received by the senator as saying.
Black conservatives, it has to be said, are viewed by Democrats as modern-day runaway slaves. They have dared to leave the plantation, to defy their Democrat masters, and to proclaim their right to think for themselves – and to vote accordingly. Addressing the recent comment by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) that Republicans were trying to get away with the murder of George Floyd, Sen. Scott perfectly described how and why Democrats take black Americans for granted:
“You see, what’s become evident to me is that [Rep. Pelosi] knows something that we all know. She knows that she can say that because the democrats have a monopoly on the black vote. And no matter the return on their loyalty – I am telling you the most loyal part of the democrat construct, black communities. And no matter the loyalty of the people, the return they get will always continue to go down because, in monopolies, you start devaluing your customer.”
The most significant concern for the modern Democratic Party should not be Tim Scott’s police reform efforts or Trump’s rallies or the fact that the Justice Department is pulling the wraps off of the Obama administration’s conspiracy against the current president. No, the Democrats’ biggest concern should be that, when the majority of blacks in America come to understand what Senator Tim Scott already knows, the Democratic Party may become a footnote in American history.
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Read more from Graham J. Noble.
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