The event, technically, was the screening of a documentary about conservative solutions to poverty. But the big draw for the nearly all-white audience of Clemson University students was Tim Scott, the only black Republican in the United States Senate — and the walking proof, to Republicans here, that they have moved beyond the old white tribalism that once defined them.

Mr. Scott, an amiable, Scripture-quoting man with a shaved head and a warm smile, was introduced by John Hart, the editor in chief of a conservative media site. The two men proceeded to advocate an ideal they both share: that character and faith can do more to elevate the poor than any government program.

But it was their quiet disagreement on the most crucial matter facing the Republican Party — teased out in two separate interviews after the Wednesday event — that proved to be more revealing.

Mr. Hart, a white man who once served as communications director for Tom Coburn, the former Republican senator from Oklahoma, said that he could never vote for Donald J. Trump because he considered him to be a “white identity politician” who was exploiting white voters’ racial grievances.

That is not the position of Mr. Scott, the first African-American elected to the Senate from the South since late in the 19th century. He has repeatedly stated that he will vote for Mr. Trump, even as he has characterized some of his statements and actions as “disgusting,” “indefensible” and “racially toxic.”

It is a kind of awkward posture that a number of Republicans have felt compelled to assume — one based on the simple belief, as Mr. Scott told Politico this spring, that the country “is better off having a Republican in the White House than having a Democrat in the White House.”

But the position is a particularly complicated one for Mr. Scott, who has long considered himself to be a “bridge builder” between races and political factions, and who has served on Capitol Hill as a rare black Republican voice at a time of rising racial conflict.

In a terse exchange with a reporter after the screening, Mr. Scott seemed perturbed that he was being asked to again explain his position on Mr. Trump. Instead of defending the Republican presidential nominee, Mr. Scott argued that Hillary Clinton and her fellow Democrats were just as bad as Mr. Trump on race matters.

Mr. Scott noted the 1996 speech in which Mrs. Clinton called some young criminals “superpredators,” a label that he and others have interpreted as a reference to young black men. And he said that the Clintons, in the 1990s, oversaw what he called “the greatest incarceration of African-American males perhaps in the last 50 years.”

“The truth is that both candidates have said some incredibly offensive and toxic things,” Mr. Scott said. “I don’t defend, one iota, any of the indefensible, disgusting things that Donald Trump has said. I just simply make sure that I do my research to understand the offensive, troubling things that Hillary Clinton has said as well.”

Mr. Scott, 51, cannot be any more different than Mr. Trump, in background or demeanor. He was raised in poverty by a single mother; he credits her and a white Chick-fil-A franchise owner he befriended as a young man with instilling in him the conservative values he has relied upon as he charted his political rise.

An evangelical Christian, soft-spoken and typically friendly with political allies and opponents, he has long espoused a worldview consistent with Republican orthodoxy, favoring low taxes, small government and a central role for religion in the public sphere.

Before being appointed to an open Senate seat by Gov. Nikki Haley, also a Republican, in 2012, he had served on the Charleston County Council, in the State Legislature and in the United States House of Representatives. He was elected in 2014 to finish out the Senate term that had been vacated by Jim DeMint.

In July, after an African-American vigilante shot a number of police officers in Dallas in apparent response to the police shootings of black men around the country, Mr. Scott delivered a trio of speeches on the Senate floor. He praised police officers as heroes, but also acknowledged a “trust gap” between the police and blacks — and said that during one year, while he was an elected official, he was pulled over seven times by the police.

Mr. Scott is running for re-election, though he does not face much of a contest. His Democratic opponent, Thomas Dixon, is an ex-convict, a recovering drug addict and a political neophyte in a deeply red state where voters have not ousted a sitting senator since 1930.

Still, Mr. Dixon has jumped on Mr. Scott’s simultaneous criticism of and support for Mr. Trump. This summer, after Mr. Scott called Mr. Trump’s comments about a judge of Mexican heritage overseeing a lawsuit involving Mr. Trump “racially toxic,” Mr. Dixon, in a prepared statement, said: “Apparently, Senator Scott thinks it’s O.K. to support a candidate for president who says racially toxic and sexist things from time to time.

“Well, Senator,” he added, “if you think a racist and a sexist should be president, South Carolinians think you shouldn’t be senator.”

Mr. Scott has a history of seeking to move past old racial grudges. In 1996, he introduced Senator Strom Thurmond at one of Mr. Thurmond’s re-election events at the time. Mr. Thurmond, a Democrat-turned Republican who served in the Senate for 48 years, was a longtime opponent of integration, though by the 1970s he had hired a black aide.

“The key word is redemption,” Mr. Scott said at the event, according to a report in The Boston Globe. “He’s changed. Thirty or 40 years ago, I wouldn’t be here.”

This season, Mr. Scott initially supported his fellow senator Marco Rubio of Florida in the Republican primaries, but eventually said that he could vote for Mr. Trump. That position has remained steadfast as many black voters have criticized Mr. Trump on numerous fronts, including his questioning of President Obama’s American citizenship, his call for a broad expansion of New York City’s “stop and frisk” policing technique, and his recent assertion that five minority men were guilty in an infamous 1989 sexual assault in New York’s Central Park, even though the men have since been exonerated by DNA evidence.

In an interview posted online in late September with Brian Kilmeade, a Fox News personality, Mr. Scott praised Mr. Trump’s efforts to court black voters, which many considered demeaning, given Mr. Trump’s assertion that many blacks lived in dysfunctional “war zones.”

“His time traveling the country and taking the time to understand the plight of the most vulnerable people in the society, black or not? Amazing,” Mr. Scott said of Mr. Trump.

Other black politicians in South Carolina, the vast majority of them Democrats, are still trying to square their personal affection for Mr. Scott with his support for Mr. Trump.

State Representative Joseph H. Neal, an African-American Democrat who has spent nearly a quarter-century in office, described Mr. Scott as “a caring and intelligent individual” with “a very clear set of values.” He added: “It is a mystery to me why he is continuing to support Mr. Trump, who, in my estimation, does not measure up to a Tim Scott, in terms of his values, or in terms of his clarity of thought.”

Because Mr. Scott’s re-election is a virtual certainty, Mr. Trump’s candidacy does not present him with the kind of immediate problem Republican incumbents in closer races are facing: embrace him and scare off moderates, or shun him and alienate the base. But a number of political observers said he might be thinking about his long-term relationship with South Carolina Republicans, particularly if he plans to run for governor someday.

“It may explain why he’s not bolting from the Trump fold,” said Todd Shaw, an associate professor of political science and African-American studies at the University of South Carolina. “There are very strong Tea Party factions evident in the Republican coalition in South Carolina.”

At the screening, a portion of the documentary series, which was released online by Mr. Hart’s company, focused on Mr. Scott’s life story — about the cramped quarters he was raised in, about how he nearly failed out of high school.

Afterward, Mr. Hart said he did not hold Mr. Scott’s position on Mr. Trump against him. “Elections are very often about very unpleasant choices,” he said.

Source: NYTimes.com

Date Posted: Monday, October 17th, 2016 , Total Page Views: 1508