Great Scott

The Scrapbook did not expect that the New York Times would express much joy at the appointment of Rep. Tim Scott of South Carolina to the Senate seat vacated by Jim DeMint. Mr. DeMint is a conservative Republican, Mr. Scott is a conservative Republican, and the governor who anointed Scott, Nikki Haley, is a conservative Republican, too.

And the truth be told, The Scrapbook would prefer to underplay the “historic” nature of Scott’s ascent to the Senate. Yes, he is the first black Republican in the upper chamber since Edward Brooke (1979) and the only African American in the Senate at all; and he assumes the seat once held by Strom Thurmond, the 1948 Dixiecrat candidate for president. The times they are a-changin’ and all that; but it is nearly a half-century since the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and we just reelected a black president. Time marches on.

Read more at the Weekly Standard