Scott's Progress
The Senate's only African-American will be a Republican.
WSJ Editorial, 12/18/12
Liberals tend to overemphasize racial diversity, especially in politics, but
the diversity lobby was notably missing in action Monday after South Carolina
Governor Nikki Haley's announcement that she chose Tim Scott to replace
departing Senator Jim DeMint. It is a
striking moment nonetheless.
A Republican Governor who is the daughter of immigrants from India appointed
a Republican who will become the only sitting African-American Senator in the
113th Congress. Mr. Scott, who was born in 1965, the year the Voting Rights Act
passed, defeated the son of the late Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond in a GOP primary
for a House seat in 2010. The former businessman represents Charleston, where
the Confederacy fired the first rounds of the Civil War, and he will be the
first black Senator from the Deep South since Reconstruction.
Mr. Scott's appointment requires him to stand for a special election in 2014,
though he has a record as a House conservative in sync with Palmetto State
values and emerged with the Tea Party. It's also worth noting that the movement
deplored by liberals as retrogressive has done more than anything in years to
increase diversity in politics—and not merely of thought. Think Marco Rubio of
Florida, Ted Cruz of Texas, Susana Martinez
of New Mexico, Brian Sandoval of Nevada, Ms. Haley herself.
The best news is that Senator-designate Scott's story isn't about racial
grievance and preference. It's a measure of personal achievement, political
conviction and the opportunities available in modern American politics.
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