Scott’s departure from a fast-dwindling GOP field for president was not a shock, given the fact that his standing in public polls is in the low single digits.
Sen. Tim Scott, the product of a poor, single-parent household who hoped to make the ultimate climb to become the first Black Republican president of the United States, dropped out of the race Sunday night, saying it was not his time.
Scott’s departure from a fast-dwindling GOP field for president was not a shock, given the fact that his standing in public polls is in the low single digits. But it appeared to take Fox News’ Trey Gowdy, a former GOP congressman who hosted Scott on his show Sunday, by surprise.
“I love America more today than I did on May 22,” when he announced his run for president at an event in his home state of South Carolina, Scott said. “But when I go back to Iowa, it will not be as a presidential candidate. I am suspending my campaign.
“The voters, who are the most remarkable people on the planet, … they’re telling me, ‘Not now, Tim.’ I don’t think they’re saying, Trey, ‘no,’ but I do [think] they’re saying ‘not now,’” Scott said.
A deeply religious conservative who often mentioned his faith on the campaign trail, Scott failed to galvanize that win of the party – even after another Christian conservative, former Vice President Mike Pence, dropped out of the race in October. Front-runner Donald Trump, who has maintained a massive lead despite four indictments and 91 felony changes, is viewed by Republican voters as being more of a “person of faith” than anyone else in the GOP field, a September poll by HarrisX found.
Scott was one of five candidates who reached the fundraising and polling thresholds to make it to the debate stage last week in Miami. But while Scott technically spoke the most during that debate, his quiet message was drowned out by others.
Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley dominated with her foreign policy remarks while tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy – who Sunday said on social media that he would immediately fire half the federal workforce, targeting those whose Social Security numbers ended with an odd-numbered digit – distracted the debate with provocative and insulting comments to people on and off stage.
In a political era when bombastic rhetoric and dire warnings about the future of the country have driven campaigns, Scott offered an optimistic tone. At the announcement of his candidacy in May, he talked about how his faith and his family helped him navigate the path that brought him to the Senate and then to the GOP field for president.
“I am living proof that America is the land of opportunity, not a land of oppression,” Scott said in North Charleston. It was a message that ultimately did not resonate with a Republican primary electorate drawn to the harsh rhetoric and policies of Trump.
Scott’s status as an unmarried man seemed to make some donors and Christian conservatives uncomfortable, as the other candidates traveled and campaigned with the politically obligatory adoring spouse. After last Tuesday’s debate, Scott brought his girlfriend of one year up to the stage, and the two briefly held hands while candidates’ families mingled.
With his polling number stubbornly stuck in the low single digits, it was not clear that Scott would have qualified for the next Republican debate Dec. 6 in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
Scott did not endorse any of the other candidates in the race. And while Scott has not attacked Trump as former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson have done to varying degrees, he said he wasn’t interested in being Trump’s number two.
“I’ll be honest with you, I ran for president to be president. I believe I could have taken this country to new heights with great unity on conservative principles,” Scott said on Fox.
“That’s what the Lord put in my heart. I think I was called to run. I was not called to win. But I certainly was called to run. And I’ll say this, that being vice president has never been on my to-do list for this campaign, and it’s certainly not there now.”
First appointed to his U.S. Senate seat in 2013 by Haley, then the South Carolina governor and later a GOP primary rival, Scott has been a unique voice in the Senate as the chamber’s only Black Republican member.
In 2016, Scott delivered a powerful series of three speeches on race on the Senate floor, confiding with startling candor that when he is in Washington, he sometimes feels more like a suspicious character than a member of what is known as the world’s greatest deliberative body.
“I recall walking into an office building just last year after being here for five years on the Capitol, and the officer looked at me, a little attitude and said, ‘The pin, I know. You, I don’t. Show me your ID,'” Scott recalled, referring to the exclusive lapel pin that identifies lawmakers as members of the House or Senate.
“I’ll tell you, I was thinking to myself, either he thinks I’m committing a crime – impersonating a member of Congress – or, or what?” Scott said. In a single year, the lawmaker added, he had been stopped seven times by police.
Scott did not show anger, however, when he was subject to racist slurs. In 2017, when Scott endorsed then-President Trump’s selection for attorney general, then-Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, a commenter on social media lashed out, calling Scott a “house n****.”
Scott derailed the writer with a single word response: “Senate.”
Source : USNEWS