What Went Down During President Biden’s Speech To Congress

Scott also talks more about voting rights that Biden did, correctly noting that large majorities of Americans support both early voting and voter ID. But then he disingenuously claims that the Georgia voting law actually expands voting opportunities just because it standardizes early-voting hours (ignoring the many other provisions of the bill, such as banning giving food and water to voters standing in line and preempting the authority of local election officials).

Well, I think it goes back, Lee, to what we were talking about earlier on “cancel culture” and how the GOP is using that as a strategy to attack Democrats for being too liberal. Scott seems to be focusing on that in his rebuttal.

The GOP is at this interesting crossroads. As they give face time to Republicans of a racial minority group like Scott, they are also having to appeal to a base of supporters motivated by white racial grievance. And, unsurprisingly, Scott leans into a kind of racial rhetoric that sounds much more like Clarence Thomas than Thurgood Marshall: “America is not a racist country.”