Scott's Plan Lays it Bare: Republicans Are Theocratic
Senator Rick Scott's platform elucidates the GOP’s policy position as it continues to actively undermine democracy and impose minority, radical Christian views on the nation.
Oh, Florida. You silly, silly state.
Following in Governor DeSantis’ footsteps, Florida Senator Rick Scott has been making headlines this week for his scathing remarks against President Biden in response to the Biden administration picking a fight with Scott’s “11 Point Plan”.
The plan, which was released in February but drowned out by the news cycle’s (rightful) focus on the invasion of Ukraine, is, to put it mildly, absolutely insane. But we’ll get to that. With the publishing of the plan, Scott broke ranks with Republicans, who under McConnell had pledged not to provide an official platform ahead of the 2022 midterms. Indeed, the GOP hasn’t updated their party platform since 2016.
Scott this week called Biden “incoherent” and “incapacitated” and demanded his resignation.
It’s a bold attack and a continuation of the type of aggression more commonly associated with T****.
Biden laid into the plan for its language that suggested Scott was advocating for tax hikes for millions of every day Americans. Scott has since refuted the assertion and walked back aspects of his plan relating to taxation.
But if you haven’t read Scott’s plan, you should. The rhetoric is shocking, and elucidates the Republican Party’s policy position as it continues to actively undermine democracy and impose minority, radical Christian views on the nation.
Here is a summary of Scott’s plan in its own language:
Education: Our kids will say the pledge of allegiance, salute the Flag, learn that America is a great country, and choose the school that best fits them.
We will inspire patriotism and stop teaching the revisionist history of the radical left; our kids will learn about the wisdom of the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the founding fathers. Public schools will focus on the 3 R’s, not indoctrinate children with critical race theory or any other political ideology.
In the same paragraph as saying kids should not be “indoctrinated”, he emphasizes the need for children to say the pledge of allegiance, salute the American flag, and “learn that America is a great country”. Hypocrisy has never been lost on conservatives.
Color blind equality: Government will never again ask American citizens to disclose their race, ethnicity, or skin color on any government form.
We are going to eliminate racial politics in America. No government policy will be based on race. People “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” We are all made in the image of God; to judge a person on the color of their epidermis is immoral.
Never mind that “color blindness” completely ignores the fact that people of color are treated completely differently than white people in the US (and eliminating “racial politics” will only lead to an exacerbation of those existing inequalities), but Scott’s statement that “we are all made in the image of God” should terrify anyone that believes in the separation of church and state, i.e., any actual patriot (this is unsurprisingly not the only time this point will be warranted).
Safety and Crime: The soft-on-crime days of coddling criminal behavior will end. We will re-fund and respect the police because, they, not the criminals, are the good guys.
We will enforce our laws, all of them, and increase penalties for theft and violent crime. We will clean up our cities and stop pretending that crime is OK. We have zero tolerance for “mostly peaceful protests” that attack police officers, loot businesses, and burn down our cities.
Despite having good intentions, the left’s defund the police movement was poorly branded and added to the GOP’s arsenal; it’s unsurprising to see it here, but what catches my eye is a “zero tolerance for ‘mostly peaceful protests’”, which, while some might say is agreeable to the extent that no one but anarchists supports looting, is dangerous in that I wouldn’t trust anyone on the political right to designate whether a protest is “peaceful” or not ever again after police violently cleared protestors in Lafayette Square in June 2020. Recall that T**** then used the opportunity to take a photo op.
Immigration: We will secure our border, finish building the wall, and name it after President D***** T****.
Nations have borders. We should give that a try. President T****’s plan to build a wall was right. We welcome those who want to join us in building the American dream, immigrants who want to be Americans, not change America. We are a stronger nation because we are a nation of immigrants, but immigration without assimilation makes us weaker. Politicians from both parties talk big about border security and do nothing. We are done with that.
Scott pledges direct fealty to T**** and his asinine wall, but more importantly he dog whistles a racist agenda by implying that certain immigrants don’t “want to be Americans” (i.e., immigrants who aren’t white and/or don’t assimilate into white Christian culture).
Growth/Economy: We will grow America’s economy, starve Washington’s economy, and stop Socialism.
Socialism is un-American and always leads to poverty and oppression. We will stop it. We will shrink the federal government, reduce the government workforce by 25% in 5 years, sell government buildings and assets, and get rid of the old, slow, closed, top-down, government-run-everything system we have today.
No surprise that the man who ran the nation’s largest for-profit healthcare company and defrauded Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal programs (and was fined $1.7bn for doing so) is against government programs.
It’s shocking that the anti-socialism rhetoric is still effective in 2022, though Scott is likely playing to Cuban voters here. Of course, everyone who is actually decently educated on the concept of socialism knows that even the farthest left of politicians like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez likely wouldn’t even qualify as socialist by most European standards, where there are more robust social policies (and generally happier citizens). Reducing the government workforce, and presumably cutting much-needed social programs, is unethical if not recklessly stupid.
Government Reform and Debt: We will eliminate all federal programs that can be done locally, and enact term limits for federal bureaucrats and Congress.
Many government agencies should be either moved out of Washington or shuttered entirely. Yesterday’s old government is fundamentally incompatible with the digital era. The permanent ruling class in Washington is bankrupting us with inflation and debt, so they must be removed. For you to have more, Washington must have less.
Enacting congressional term limits is actually something most left-wingers would likely be on board with. Shuttering government agencies that provide Americans with much-needed resources? Not so much.
Fair Fraud-Free Elections: We will protect the integrity of American Democracy and stop left-wing efforts to rig elections.
Today’s Democrat Party is trying to rig elections and pack the courts because they have given up on Democracy. They don’t believe they can win based on their ideas, so they want to game the system and legalize voter fraud to stay in power. In true Orwellian fashion, Democrats refer to their election rigging plans as “voting rights”. We won’t allow the radical left to destroy our democracy by institutionalizing dishonesty and fraud.
Gaslight. Obstruct. Project. GOP.
Repeating the Big Lie with this type of rhetoric makes the blood run cold. Especially when Scott so blatantly accuses Democrats of exactly that which Republicans are doing in order to muddy Americans’ concept of the truth.
Family: We will protect, defend, and promote the American Family at all costs.
The nuclear family is crucial to civilization, it is God’s design for humanity, and it must be protected and celebrated. To say otherwise is to deny science. The fanatical left seeks to devalue and redefine the traditional family, as they undermine parents and attempt to replace them with government programs. We will not allow Socialism to place the needs of the state ahead of the family.
This is some gourmet evangelical shit here. “The nuclear family is crucial to civilization, it is God’s design for humanity […] To say otherwise is to deny science.” A dog whistle against LGBTQ+ rights if I’ve ever seen one, not to mention the mental gymnastics needed to try to ascribe science to blatant religious doctrine. And for good measure, Scott attributes to the “socialism” boogeyman that the perfect white, Christian American family is at risk.
Gender, Life, Science: Men are men, women are women, and unborn babies are babies. We believe in science:
Men and women are biologically different, “male and female He created them.” Modern technology has confirmed that abortion takes a human life. Facts are facts, the earth is round, the sun is hot, there are two genders, and abortion stops a beating heart. To say otherwise is to deny science.
Bigotry and religion go hand-in-hand here again, with another attempt to disguise the two as “science” when of course it couldn’t be further from it. In just five sentences, Scott manages to be anti-trans, anti-gay, and anti-abortion. Impressive even by Republican standards.
Religious Liberty and Big Tech: Americans will be free to welcome God into all aspects of our lives, and we will stop all government efforts to deny our religious freedom and freedom of speech. The Democrat Party and their Big Tech allies are not merely secular; they have virtually created a new religion of wokeness that is increasingly hostile toward people of faith, particularly Christians and Jews. They are determined to drive all mention of God out of public view. We will not be silenced, canceled, or told what words to use by the politically correct crowd.
This one is doozy. Sure, Americans are free to welcome whatever God they please into their lives, though they are also free from being forced to do so by the First Amendment.
Accusing the Democratic Party of being secular — oh how I wish that were true! But in fact, just one member of Congress — Krysten Sinema — is religiously unaffiliated.
Of course, it is typically the ones with the most rights and freedoms that like to pretend they are victims, but the reality is that the most hostile anyone on the left is to Christianity is probably when Bill Maher roasts the faithful in between complaints of a tough crowd and that it took too long to install solar panels on his California mansion.
America First: We are Americans, not globalists.
America will be dependent on NO other country. We will conduct no trade that takes away jobs or displaces American workers. Countries who oppose us at the UN will get zero financial help from us. We will be energy-independent and build supply chains that never rely on our adversaries. We will only help countries that are willing to defend themselves, like Israel.
And let’s throw in some latent antisemitism into the picture for good measure — Scott describes us as “Americans, not globalists”, a known dog whistle for anti-Semites. Ironic then that he espouses support for Israel, unless you understand that for Christian fundamentalists, Israel needs to maintain and grow its status as a power so that everyone can die and the good ones can go to heaven.
Scared?
Thankfully, Senator McConnell and other prominent Republicans in March rejected Scott’s proposal. They did so because it was bigoted, crypto-fascist, and espoused anti-democratic ideals.
Haha, just playin’.
McConnell focused his ire on the controversial tax plan, telling reporters in March:
“Let me tell you what would not be a part of our agenda: We will not have as part of our agenda a bill that raises taxes on half the American people and sunsets Social Security and Medicare within five years.”
Ah, so nothing about all that other crazy stuff? Cool, cool, cool, tight tight tight.
Instead of expressing concern with the content of the plan, Republicans were instead worried that Scott’s release of what attempts to be a party platform will give Democrats ammunition against the party ahead of the midterm election. One unnamed Republican said:
“It’s the political competency or the lack thereof.”
Of course, I would be remiss not to bring it up given that Republicans are so frightened of the plan being used against them, especially since Biden’s line of attack appears to also focus primarily on the asinine tax plan (not unwise given the country’s current concern over inflation and the economy).
The concern among Republicans mirrors their attempts to spin the unpopular Dobbs draft decision overturning the right to abortion as a story more about the terrible nature of a leak than of the draft’s substance. As I wrote last week, overturning Roe is terribly unpopular, hence the GOP’s attempts at “but look over here!”
The irony is, by needlessly continuing to attack Biden, Scott has continued to draw press, meaning more and more Americans will be exposed to his (and his party’s) absolutely bonkers Christian nationalist ideas and rhetoric.
And don’t be fooled by conservatives who seek to distance themselves from the plan. Would anyone be surprised to find that Scott’s policy is actually popular within the GOP, even if Republicans just don’t want to say it out loud?
Though The Washington Post gave outgoing press sec Jen “brings the receipts” Psaki three out of four Pinocchio’s for her suggestion that Republicans broadly back Scott’s plan, it is nevertheless true that GOP chairwoman Ronna McDaniel stated:
“Republicans like Senator Rick Scott have real solutions to put us back on track. From lowering costs and creating jobs, to supporting police and securing the border, Republicans are offering a clear plan to protect and reinvigorate the America we know and love.”
And Scott himself is indeed the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, responsible for working to get Republicans elected to the Senate. Even if McConnell doesn’t want Scott’s plan ruining the party’s lead in the midterms, he and other Republicans may well agree with its underlying principles.
The Supreme Court’s decision to undo Roe has woken Americans up to the idea that radical Christians have fully taken hold of the Republican party, and Scott’s plan only serves to crystallize that fact.
Americans would do well to vote like they want to live in a democracy, not a theocracy.
Photo by Gage Skidmore
Thanks again for your well written, thoughtful commentary!We need more Jack Carter Benjamin’s in this world! How do we get uninterested people to pay attention to what is going on in our country!