Tim Scott Is Good at This

By Noah Rothman

Friday, July 14, 2023

 

I have not been coy about what I believe are the diminishing returns associated with sitting across from Tucker Carlson. Several of those running for the GOP nomination committed to the Iowa candidates’ forum that Carlson is hosting today. The best they can hope for is to do no lasting damage to their candidacies by allowing the former Fox News Channel host to steer their campaigns onto the shoals. Senator Tim Scott managed it well.

 

Scott declined Carlson’s repeated solicitations for a yes-or-no reaction to the Biden administration’s decision to provide Ukraine with cluster munitions. Instead, he replied with the evasive yet perfectly valid contention that the United States would not be litigating the issue if he were president today.

 

There’s reason to believe he’s right. Had the Biden administration consented, along with the Atlantic Alliance, to providing Ukraine with fixed-wing aircraft and long-range tactical-missile systems to augment the combined-arms counteroffensive it is presently waging, it’s possible the U.S. would not have to invite the scorn of its European allies who object to cluster bombs. The Biden administration’s hesitancy, we are told, has everything to do with its fear of escalating the conflict in ways that might draw the West closer to the fighting in Ukraine. But the same logic reportedly applied to tanks, Patriot missile-defense systems, anti-ship missiles, and multiple-launch rocket systems — misgivings the Biden administration somehow overcame, and the provision of which prompted no unusual response from the Russians.

 

Scott has managed to achieve two things with this response. First, he has allowed voters to envision better outcomes at this stage of Russia’s war in Ukraine without spelling them out, which leaves those outcomes to the infinite variations individual imaginations can conjure. But Scott has also communicated that his approach to the conflict would be bolder, more steadfast, and more muscular than the one authored by the weak-kneed Democrat in the White House. That pings all the right nerve centers for conventional Republican primary voters who respond favorably to the idea that the United States is a singular force for good on the world stage, no matter what our European allies think.

 

Scott will be dinged for refusing to answer the question directly. He will be attacked by Republicans who want to see the party commit to a humbler foreign policy or focus on hypothetical long-term threats abroad at the expense of the acute, ongoing crisis that dominates the headlines today. Scott is betting that is not where the center of gravity in the party really is, and I think he’s right.