Rick Scott’s Failure to Launch Could Be the GOP’s Blessing in Disguise

By Kevin D. Williamson

Sunday, April 03, 2022

 

In February, Florida senator Rick Scott launched his “11-Point Plan to Rescue America,” a rhetorical rocket that sputtered shortly after takeoff and then fell on his head like an 11-Point Plan to Do a Pretty Convincing Impersonation of Wile E. Coyote. He is still sitting in the smoking wreckage, stubbornly pulling on the pilot’s yoke and wondering why the damned thing won’t take off.

 

Conservatives and progressives found themselves in a rare moment of broad agreement that Scott’s proposal to impose a tax increase on the lower half of the income curve — one that would fall most heavily on low-income families with children — was suboptimal as a policy proposal. It is the case that about half of all households have no federal income-tax liability at the end of the year, but it is not the case that they do not pay any federal taxes, including taxes on their income: The so-called payroll tax is another income tax, one that the working poor and those of modest means do not avoid. Rick Scott has always presented himself as a numbers guy, but here he has been carried away on a flight of fancy, taken in by all that “skin in the game” talk. And if you are hitching your political future to that least influential of all caucuses — Republicans for Higher Income Taxes — then the political numbers get pretty ugly indeed.

 

But Scott isn’t giving it up. Last week, he was at the Heritage Foundation, pitching his wares like a door-to-door salesman, to the quiet amusement of the New York Times and the dismay of more than a few conservative observers.

 

Only a few years ago, Rick Scott was one of this country’s most effective — and most sensible — governors. If it is easy to forget that fact, it is in no small part because Scott’s asinine antics since have made it so easy to forget. Beyond the income-tax misadventure, his so-called plan — which isn’t really a plan as much as it is a tantrum — is Fox News and Facebook stuff, lightweight hokum about “treating socialism as an enemy combatant” and things of that nature, 100 percent industry-grade derka-derka.

 

Scott’s transformation from conservative pragmatist to howling hurler of hooey is a sobering example of what proximity to personal power — which, in our context, means presidential power — can do to a man, a reminder that character matters in a political leader because it is more enduring than white papers and more indicative of how a politician will actually perform in office. The transformation is also a very amusing example of the perversity of the Republican cult of “anti-establishment” politics. If there is such a thing as a Republican “establishment,” Rick Scott is it: In spite of his shallow insurgent talk, Scott not only is a former governor and sitting senator but also sits quite near the apex of the GOP hierarchy as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

 

The job of the NRSC is to help Republicans retake a majority in the Senate, but Scott’s daft “11-Point Plan to Rescue America” will make that a little more difficult — and would make that a great deal more difficult if more people knew about it or took it seriously. But it isn’t a plan to take seriously. It is vague, demagogic, silly, sophomoric, ill-considered, innumerate, rhetorically incontinent, rage-addled, and dishonest — in short, everything you would expect of someone seeking the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, which is, of course, what this is all about. Rick Scott has seen the power of crazy up close, and he means to move the Republican Party’s locus of looney west, from Palm Beach to Naples.

 

As governor of Florida, Scott focused on governor stuff, worthy projects such as improving the state’s seaports and airports (which needed attention), streamlining state programs, and recruiting new businesses to the state. In those years, it was Texas that was leading the nation in economic dynamism and job growth, and Governor Scott described his agenda in terms of a friendly rivalry with his counterpart at the time: The goal, he said, was to “kick Rick Perry’s butt.”

 

America could use more of that old, now-almost-forgotten Rick Scott. The Rick Scott we currently have isn’t much use to anybody — least of all to Rick Scott. He has a big brain, which is a welcome thing in a politician, but he isn’t packing the rest of the gear to be elected president. The person who convinces him that he isn’t the right guy for the top job will be doing him a favor. The voters have surprised me before. But, as public personas go, Scott is the demon lovechild of Senator Ted Cruz and Dr. Sheldon Cooper — one part nasty and one part aspy. In spite of his generally excellent performance in office as governor, his elections have been quite close: He beat Bill Nelson by only two-tenths of a percentage point in his 2018 Senate race, and before that he was reelected as governor in 2014 by only one point — against Charlie Crist, who for years has been doggedly persisting in Florida politics like a rare strain of chlamydia at the Villages. There is a reason for those close calls on Election Day.

 

Conservatives may not have much interest in whether Scott’s presidential ambitions crash and burn like some Saturday-morning cartoon catastrophe. But he is still at the top of the GOP Senate campaign, and a Republican majority in the Senate would be a very useful thing — it would mean the end of whatever remains of the Biden administration’s legislative agenda. Rick Scott complains that “Washington’s full of a bunch of do-nothing people,” but a do-nothing Senate that also ensures that Joe Biden does nothing would be a do-nothing Senate worth having.

 

So maybe it is not the worst thing for the republic that Rick Scott’s rocket exploded on takeoff: Scott was, at one time, damn good at his job, and there is work that needs doing here on Earth.