Florida Sen. Rick Scott is the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and part of his role is fluffling up Republican senatorial candidates, no matter how many secret children or lurid murder fantasies they’ve been nurturing (or not nurturing, as the case may be).
If his “11-point Plan to Rescue America” is any indication, he’s really bad at his job. Among the Trumpy bullet points in his plan, which reads like The Handmaid’s Tale screwed Trump’s “American carnage” speech in the back seat of Trans Am and gave birth in the bathroom stall of an AM/PM, is this saucy nug: “All Americans should pay some income tax to have skin in the game, even if a small amount. Currently over half of Americans pay no income tax.” In other words, in a surprise gift to Democrats, Scott loudly announced that he wants to raise taxes on half the country. The poor half.
Slick, man. Real slick.
This morning on CBS’ Face the Nation, host Margaret Brennan asked Scott about his clown-rickshaw of Senate candidates, and it was a real bloodbath. And not the wholesome sort of bloodbath Hillary takes to confer immortality and open up her pores. No. It was gruesome, yo.
In fact, Scott’s faltering response is pretty much what you’d see if Lord Voldemort accidentally turned himself into a puddle and just kept talking. (Second tweet, after the one where known Medicare fraudster Scott kvetches about supposed Medicare “cuts.”)
BRENNAN: “In a local radio interview in July, you talked a lot about your business as an executive, and you said we should start electing people that we would hire. In Georgia, Herschel Walker, Republican Senate candidate, has lied about the number of children he has, about his business dealings. His ex-wife said he held a gun to her head and said, ‘I’m going to blow your f-ing brains out.’ In Arizona, the candidate Blake Masters called the Unabomber an underrated thinker. He said that al Qaeda doesn't actually pose substantial threat to Americans. I mean, I’ve got a list of candidates here who’ve ... said some pretty troubling things. Would you hire these people to work for you?”
SCOTT: “Well, you go through each person, but I’m not the one doing it. It’s the voters of those states are doing it. The voters of those states are going to make a choice ...”
BRENNAN: “You’re trying to help Senate Republicans and lead them to victory. These are your candidates.”
SCOTT: “So, Margaret, as you remember, the voters of Arizona are going to choose who they’re going to vote. And what they’re going to choose, is they’re going to choose between Blake Masters and Mark Kelly. Mark Kelly has voted to keep the border open. He’s never voted for border security. He’s voted for the tax increases, he’s voted for cutting Medicare. He’s voted with Chuck Schumer and with Joe Biden basically 100% of the time. … This election is going to be about Joe Biden, and so this election is going to be about all the bad things that have happened, the fact that we’re going into a recession, the fact that inflation is at 9%, the fact that gas prices are up $2. All these things. That’s what people are looking at ...”
BRENNAN: “These are your Senate Republican candidates. These are your candidates. Would you hire them?”
SCOTT: “And the voters of these states are going to decide if they’re going to hire them. Now I get to vote in Florida, and that’s how I think about it. But the voters in those states will choose in those states who they want. And it’s a choice between two people. But, look, all the Democrat nominees are basically Biden clones [crosstalk] ...”
BRENNAN: “But you would acknowledge that if somebody went in for an interview with a private corporation, these things would come up as red flags to HR.”
Hoo-boy, that was fun, wasn’t it?
“We should elect the same people we’d want to hire for jobs, but I’m not doing the hiring so never mind. Can you ask me something else now, please?”
Of course, Scott knows that no competent CEO would hire Mehmet Oz or Herschel Walker for anything on the corporate org chart higher than assistant glory hole attendant. But these are the candidates super-genius Donald Trump gave him, so he has to make do.
And given this country’s current “eccentricities,” some or all of them could actually win.
Needless to say, we can’t let that happen. If you want to do your part in preventing a future right-wing dystopia, there are steps you can take. Volunteer to send letters to voters, or contribute to Democratic candidates up and down the ballot. And most of all: Remember to vote!
Check out Aldous J. Pennyfarthing’s four-volume Trump-trashing compendium, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.
