Editor’s Note: John Avlon is a CNN senior political analyst and anchor. He is the author of “Lincoln and the Fight for Peace.” The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more opinion at CNN.
CNN
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Don’t underestimate Tim Scott.
This week, the South Carolina Republican Senator embarked on the obligatory Iowa listening tour that precedes a possible presidential campaign. He offered up a well-scripted speech in Des Moines and then led the Polk County Lincoln Day dinner, testing out the themes that could define a candidacy.
If you glanced at the headlines, you might think that he was selling a warmed over form of Trump’s “combative vision,” served with a side order of DeSantis’ bitter culture war assaults.
That would be a mistake. Because if you actually listened to Scott’s speeches, you’d hear a very different pitch to voters. “For America to be at our best, we have to work together,” Scott said. “We must come together on a common ground, built on common sense.”
Yes, Tim Scott is an unapologetic conservative. He is a person whose religious faith genuinely defines his personal journey and his politics. That may or may not be your policy preference. But his vision is fundamentally optimistic, a rebuke to grievance politics on the left and (implicitly) the right.
He is not fanning the flames of fear about “American carnage.” He is not wielding the American flag as a weapon to bludgeon people who look different than him. Amid a wave of strategically induced CRT panic, he is also not trying to whitewash American history to pretend it is an unadulterated story of perfection.
At the Lincoln Day dinner, he told the story of how his beloved grandfather, born in 1921, was taught to step aside on the sidewalk to let a white man pass and never make eye contact. This was deep in the Jim Crow South. “So when I talk about our history, I’m not whitewashing it,” Scott said. But he added that his grandfather told him “you can be bitter – or you can be better. I chose better.”
As the only Black Republican Senator, Scott sees his remarkable rise as evidence of American exceptionalism and our success in forming a more perfect union. And as inherently unique as it is, Scott’s story is…
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