Tag Archives: Tim Scott

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Race enters Lynch debate over AG vote

I didn’t predict it would happen, but the debate over when to vote on the confirmation of Loretta Lynch as the next U.S. attorney general has taken an unsurprising turn.

The issue of race has entered this debate, as Lynch is the first African-American woman ever nominated to head the Justice Department.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/dick-durbin-loretta-lynch-back-of-bus-116180.html?hp=t1_r

The introduction was made by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who said the delays in voting on Lynch’s confirmation has forced the nominee to “sit at the back of the bus.” Durbin’s reference, of course, was to the great Rosa Parks, the civil rights icon who famously refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in the 1950s.

To my mind, the issue more about partisan politics than it is about race and Durbin should not have gone there during his Senate floor speech.

Durbin drew the expected criticism from Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., the Senate’s lone black Republican, who accused Durbin of being a race-baiter.

ā€œIt is helpful to have a long memory and to remember that Durbin voted against Condoleezza Rice during the 40th anniversary of the March [on Selma]. So I think, in context, itā€™s just offensive that we have folks who are willing to race bait on such an important issue as human trafficking,ā€ Scott said. ā€œSometimes people use race as an issue that is hopefully going to motivate folks for their fight. But what it does, is it infuriates people.ā€

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is wrong to hold up the Lynch vote. She needs to be confirmed and the Justice Department needs to get refocused exclusively on its job, which is to enforce federal law.

I just wish we could have kept the race argument out of this so we can stick instead to the raw political gamesmanship that the GOP leadership is playing while delaying Lynch’s confirmation vote.

 

national news, political news

Love brings diversity to Black Caucus

Well, how about this? The Congressional Black Caucus — normally an echo chamber comprising progressive Democrats — is going to have a Republican join its ranks.

U.S. Rep. Mia Love of Utah will become a member of the CBC, a group she once vowed to “dismantle.” She now hopes to change it from within.

Good for her. Good for the CBC.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/01/06/mia-love-joins-the-cbc-the-group-she-vowed-to-dismantle/

It’s not that the CBC has been devoid of Republican members. The most recent member had been Rep. Allen West of Florida, the TEA party blowhard who — in my view — disgraced himself by suggesting that most Democrats were closet communists. Voters tossed him out after a single term.

Black Republicans in the past have been reluctant to join the CBC. The late former Sen. Edward Brooke of Massachusetts, the first African-American elected since Reconstruction, didn’t join; neither did former U.S. Rep. J.C. Watt of Oklahoma; current Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina hasn’t joined.

It’s good for the caucus to hear from Rep. Love. She clearly is going to sing from a different hymnal than her CBC colleagues.

That’s OK. A group that preaches “diversity” is now going to haveĀ some within its own ranks.

 

national news, political news

Here's a way to demonstrate diversity

New members of Congress proclaim a “new day” has dawned on Capitol Hill. You hear it after every election.

I get their enthusiasm and their interest in stirring the pot.

Here, though, is the surest way to actually prove a new day has arrived at the seat of federal government power.

The Congressional Black Caucus needs to invite two new members of Congress to its membership: U.S. Rep.-elect Mia Love of Utah and U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina.

They are Republicans.

Traditionally, the CBC has been all-Democrat organization. It goes back to its founding in 1969. The Senate at the time had a black member, Edward Brooke, R-Mass., who didn’t join.

Since then, its membership has comprised Democrats only.

I see nothing in the title of the organization that says its members must beĀ from one party. The very term “Congressional Black Caucus” states quite clearly that all African-Americans who take the oath to serve in Congress are eligible to join.

So, with a brand new African-American Republican from Utah coming on board in January, and with another freshly elected Republican senator from South Carolina (Scott had been appointed to the seat by Gov. Nikki Haley) among its members, the CBC can demonstrate its belief in ideological diversity.

No political organization necessarily needs to be a mere echo chamber, with members parroting each others’ point of view. All political organization need to hear varying points of view. It’s good for the soul and the mind.

The Values Voter Summit earlier this year is an example of an organization that shuts out liberals because, by golly, liberals just don’t appreciate good ol’ American values the way conservatives do. That, of course, is utter horse manure.

Let’s turn this notion on its ear. The CBC is a traditionally progressive organization. How about throwing tradition out the window and insist that two new members of Congress — both Republicans and both clearly conservative — join the CBC and infuse that caucus with some fresh perspective?

You want diversity? There you would have it.