Thread by @bansisharma

1. Tim Scott’s GOP Revival Message

A powerful rebuttal to Joe Biden’s big government agenda.

Hallelujah!

2. WSJ Editorial Board penned a very clear and concise summary of the key message Sen. Tim Scott delivered in response to the big government message President Biden delivered to a joint session of Congress.
wsj.com/articles/tim-s…

3. The worst job in Washington is delivering the out-of-power party’s rebuttal to a President’s address to Congress. Invariably the poor soul looks small in comparison to a POTUS addressing all branches of government and the nation from the well of the House.

Until Tim Scott.

4. On Wednesday the junior Senator from South Carolina offered the Republican response to Joe Biden’s the-era-of-very-big-government-is-back speech. He laid out what the GOP is against in the Biden agenda, but also what it is for, and the principles behind it.

5. The most electrifying moment came when he squarely addressed an issue now tearing the nation apart. “Hear me clearly,” Mr. Scott said. “America is not a racist country.”

6. Most Americans know this. But too many of our leaders are afraid to say so publicly. He made clear he was not saying America is perfect, or that racism is totally behind us. Even as a Senator, he said, he knows what it’s like “to be pulled over for no reason."

7. What he objects to are those who wield race as a political weapon, hoping “to use our painful past to dishonestly shut down debates in the present.” He called out Democrats for blocking even a debate on his police reform bill last year after the death of George Floyd.

8. But the bulk of his message was about hope. “This should be a joyful springtime for our nation,” he said. American families deserve “better” than what the President is offering—and then he went on to define better.

9. “Just before COVID, we had the most inclusive economy in my lifetime. The lowest unemployment ever recorded for Blacks, Hispanics, and Asian-Americans. The lowest for women in nearly 70 years. Wages were growing faster for the bottom 25% than the top 25%.”

10. "That happened because Republicans focused on expanding opportunity for all Americans."

America’s “best future,” he said, “won’t come from Washington schemes.”

11. He called President Biden a “good man,” but went on to say that what we need more than a multi-trillion dollar tax-and-spending plan is “common sense and common ground.”

12. If he has hope in America’s future, it’s in part because he has seen what American opportunity can do for ordinary citizens, taking his own family “from cotton to Congress in one lifetime.”

13. In sum, Sen. Scott offered an optimistic Republican vision that stresses the dignity of work, individual freedom over government dependence, and belief in the principle of equal opportunity for all to rise.

14. Mr. Biden is trying to jam a super-sized government agenda through Congress with narrow majorities and no mandate. America needs a vital opposition party to make a principled case against that agenda and focus on the future. Mr. Scott showed them the way.

The End