Former President Donald Trump, the presumptive 2024 Republican nominee, could receive a meaningful boost from a surprising source.
According to a Harvard-Harris poll conducted online on May 15-16, Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina checks nearly all of the boxes one would hope to see in Trump’s vice-presidential running mate.
Specifically, the poll of 1,660 registered voters showed that Scott could enhance Trump’s already growing appeal among black, Hispanic, independent and even Democratic voters.
One must be careful, of course, not to draw overly broad conclusions from a single poll.
Furthermore, the margins by which voters expressed their preference for Scott over other possible VP candidates were hardly overwhelming.
Still, other evidence from the same poll lent support to the argument for Scott as potentially Trump’s most helpful selection.
Thus, in an era marked by intense anti-establishment sentiment, should Republicans take seriously the counterintuitive idea of a sitting U.S. senator as Trump’s running mate?
The answer depends on how Trump views the state of the presidential race, as well as the message he hopes to send.
The Harvard-Harris Poll
To understand what the poll revealed about preferred VP candidates, imagine a group of 10 registered voters.
According to the poll, seven of those 10 have already made up their minds about whether to vote for Trump, President Joe Biden, independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or perhaps someone else.
Scott gave Trump the best chance of wooing those three remaining undecided voters.
Significantly, Scott’s appeal cut across demographic groups and even political parties. Indeed, voters of every description narrowly identified the South Carolina senator as the prospective VP most likely to swing their vote in Trump’s direction.
For instance, when asked if Scott’s selection as Trump’s running mate would make them more likely to vote for the former president, 24 percent of independent voters responded in the affirmative. Among those same independents, former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy finished second at 21 percent.
That kind of response could carry substantial weight with the former president. After all, 44 percent of independents described themselves as undecided, compared to only 22 percent of Republicans and 30 percent of Democrats.
Speaking of Democrats, Scott received twice as much support from that rival party as the next-closest VP option, Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.
Likewise, on the question of whether a particular VP candidate would make them more likely to support Trump, Scott received the highest percentage of affirmative responses from white (25 percent) and Latino (33 percent) voters. Among black voters, Scott tied with Ramaswamy and Rubio at 25 percent.
On that same question, Ramaswamy earned the highest percentage of affirmative responses from Republicans with 32 percent. But Scott finished a close second at 29 percent.
In short, voters of every description identified Scott as a VP candidate who could swing their votes toward Trump.
Furthermore, from a list of 24 public figures, most of them current or former political candidates or officeholders, Scott tied with RFK Jr. for the second-highest net favorability rating at plus-10 percent. Only the multi-billionaire businessman and investor Elon Musk (plus-13 percent) rated higher.
In a sign that the establishment media’s propaganda has largely failed, Trump earned the highest overall favorability rating (50 percent). But the former president’s high unfavorable rating of 46 percent left him with a net of only plus-4 percent.
By comparison, the lesser-known Scott enjoyed a favorable rating of 35 percent and an unfavorable rating of 25 percent. The remaining 40 percent of respondents either had no opinion or had not heard of him.
Most significant of all, a whopping 55 percent of respondents approved of the job Trump did as president. By contrast, Biden earned only a 44 percent approval rating and a net favorability of minus-10 percent.
Indeed, only 42 percent of respondents rated Biden’s economy as “strong,” compared to more than 70 percent in January 2020.
That kind of nostalgia for the Trump presidency could make the even-keeled, fiscally conservative Scott an even more attractive choice.
The Prospect of a Trump-Scott Ticket
What would it mean for Trump to select Scott as his running mate? And should he do it? The answers to these questions depend on how Trump views the presidential race and what message he wants to send.
Many things about the 2024 election feel unprecedented, including Democrats’ banana republic-like weaponization of federal agencies and the justice system. Indeed, Biden himself has often behaved like a dictator, unleashing federal law enforcement on his political opponents and demonizing them as enemies of democracy.
Thus, Trump has good reasons to run as the candidate who will drain the swamp and smash the deep state.
To do those things, however, he must win the election. And that will require gauging both the electorate’s mood and the real condition of the country.
Not since 1892, when former President Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, defeated incumbent Republican President Benjamin Harrison, have voters faced a choice between two major-party candidates who each had served as president. (Former President Theodore Roosevelt ran on the third-party Progressive ticket in the 1912 election, outpolling incumbent Republican President William Howard Taft but losing to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.)
As the Harvard-Harris poll indicated, voters have compared Biden’s job performance to Trump’s and found the incumbent lacking.
With that in mind, Trump now represents what Republicans once called a “Return to Normalcy.” And that sentiment has a track record of strong appeal to weary voters. In the 1920 presidential election, with the country reeling from World War I and extreme progressive activism, Republican Warren G. Harding rode that “normalcy” slogan to the largest popular-vote margin-of-victory in U.S. history.
Selecting Scott as his running mate would signal that Trump plans to position himself as the “normalcy” candidate. And there is some evidence that the former president might have Scott in mind at least for an important role.
At a Thursday evening rally in the South Bronx, for instance, Trump spoke with Lawrence B. Jones of Fox News about why black, Hispanic and younger voters have gravitated toward his campaign.
The former president cited criminal justice reform but also gave credit to the South Carolina senator.
“Opportunity zones with Tim Scott — he was so much in favor of it,” Trump said in a clip posted to the social media platform X.
Trump at South Bronx rally asked, “You see Black support going up, along with Hispanic and young people? Like I said, the people looked more like me than you. And they say you’re different. Why?”
He responds, “Because I did things in office that nobody else has done. Criminal… pic.twitter.com/tz2eExlChk
— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) May 24, 2024
Scott’s 2017 “opportunity zones” initiative used tax-based incentives to encourage investment in low-income communities. According to The State, an analysis of South Carolina opportunity zones showed higher median household income and lower poverty rates in the vast majority of zones.
Last week, the senator himself fueled speculation that he might serve as Trump’s running mate.
If so, it would represent a departure from the tone Scott struck after abruptly suspending his presidential campaign in November. Serving as a vice-presidential running mate “has never been on my to-do list for this campaign,” Scott said at the time according to the Associated Press, “and it’s certainly not there now.”
Since then, however, Trump has heaped praise on his former rival.
“As a candidate he did a good job, but as a surrogate he’s unbelievable,” the former president reportedly said earlier this month.
That Trump views Scott as a great surrogate might constitute the most important clue of all.
For reasons that probably have deep roots in our natures as animals, a vice-presidential candidate must have the dependable quality of always failing to outshine the person atop the ticket.
Consider the last seven vice presidents: Kamala Harris, Mike Pence, Biden, Dick Cheney, Al Gore, Dan Quayle and George H.W. Bush. All had smaller personalities or otherwise appeared less impressive than the president they served. If any of them exercised meaningful influence over the president, it was Cheney, and he did so behind the scenes.
Of the names often floated for VP, only Ramaswamy has a personality formidable enough to diminish Trump somewhat by comparison. But others could pose the same kind of threat in a different way.
Last month, for instance, Trump met with Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a former rival for the presidential nomination and a favorite of conservatives. Although DeSantis immediately endorsed Trump after dropping out of the race in January, the Florida governor seems more like an ally of the former president than a surrogate. In fact, DeSantis has publicly stated that he would not serve as Trump’s running mate.
In short, a Trump-Scott ticket appears viable for reasons we might summarize in two words: normalcy and surrogacy.
Whom Should Trump Select?
In January, we presented 12 vice-presidential contenders based on a slew of reports over the previous year. Though we claim no inside information — only educated guesses and analysis-based preferences — we can now narrow that list to four. Three of the five people we identified as favorites remain so, along with Scott.
Curiously, at that time Trump indicated that he already knew whom he would select as his running mate. There was little evidence that Scott had received serious consideration. And the senator himself had expressed a lack of interest when he suspended his campaign. Thus, he did not appear among the 12 contenders.
That might constitute a clue in itself. After all, if Trump had made his decision by January, and if he sticks to that decision, then Scott’s polling performance might not matter.
Still, we cannot ignore those polls or the former president’s comments. Nor can we ignore Scott’s conservative credentials.
“Black families survived slavery. We survived poll taxes and literacy tests. We survived discrimination being woven into the laws of our country,” Scott said in a Republican primary debate last September.
“What was hard to survive was Johnson’s Great Society where they decided to … take the black father out of the household to get a check in the mail. And you can now measure that in unemployment, in crime, in devastation,” he added. “If you want to restore hope, you’ve got to restore the family.”
That kind of talk would endear Scott to the conservative GOP base.
We might say the same, however, for another Trump loyalist and serious VP contender, Dr. Ben Carson.
“What is the basic building block of a society? It’s the family. The family is the foundation of the community, which is the foundation of the state, which is the foundation of the nation,” Carson, former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Trump administration, told The Western Journal in a recent video interview.
“So if you want to really disrupt a nation like the United States of America, which is much too strong to be overcome militarily, you go to the root cause of its strength, and that’s the basic family unit,” he added.
On potentially serving as Trump’s running mate, Carson expressed interest in “doing whatever is necessary to save this country.”
Meanwhile, talk of family values should remind us of the families torn apart by the Biden administration’s persecution of Americans involved in the Capitol incursion of Jan. 6, 2021 — an event that has raised legitimate suspicions of possible federal instigation, if not outright entrapment.
And that should remind us that the 2024 election, at its core, is not about jobs or the stock market or any other traditional election issues. It is about wresting control of the government from the corrupt, bloodthirsty establishment and returning it to the sovereign people.
For eight years, the establishment has made it clear that it regards Trump as an existential threat.
Thus, both Ramaswamy and former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii remain viable VP candidates. Ramaswamy has both echoed and amplified Trump’s criticism of the deep state. Gabbard, who has long denounced the regime-change wars that enrich the establishment, left the Democratic Party in 2022 and has emerged as a staunch critic of the woke, authoritarian, Democratic elite.
In short, if Trump wants to signal his swamp-draining intentions, then he should choose Ramaswamy or Gabbard.
Likewise, if Trump wants a VP candidate whom the establishment fears, then he should choose Ramaswamy or Gabbard. Scott checks many boxes related to likability and conservative credentials, but he probably does not scare the establishment.
If, on the other hand, Trump wants to send a message of conservative “normalcy” — not to mention competency and decency — then he should choose Scott or Carson.
