I suspect Tim Scott will be dropping out

New Hampshire viewers of Fox News get innundated with GOP candidate commercials. Including Tim Scott's. 

That is ending for Scott. His PAC is pulling his ads.

Democrats might presume Tim Scott's black skin means that Republican voters are never going to take him serously as a candidate. Democrats have it backwards. Scott's race and origin story are positives for him.

Tim Scott has a modern  "log cabin" story. He is a Black conservative. He adopted the views and attitudes of the respectable majority culture. His predictable, down-the-line positions are affirmation for White conservatives. Scott "fits in." He doesn't criticize Trump. He is a pro-business, jobs-oriented, tax-cutting, Chamber of Commerce old-style Republican. He says Hamas is bad, that we should be energy dominent, that we should cut corporate and individual taxes while also cutting the deficit. He isn't edgy or new. Qute the opposite. 

He had a brief period when Republican donors and pundits thought this well-rounded candidate would be the favored alternative to Trump and DeSantis. They thought he could make inroads in Georgia and other crossover states. His race and story were the "little extra" Scott brought to the campain. It made sense on paper.

He is lost in the scrum, polling near zero. He is serving up healthy "comfort food" to a primary electorate that has gotten accustomed to a diet of Halloween candy.

Except he says one important, interesting, controversial thing. He condemned Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. He didn't complain about its cost or that it was a give-away. He said it was a disaster for Black Americans because it destroyed Black families. Great Society means-testing conditioned assistance to poor women and children on there not being a man in the house. So men left. That destroyed marriages and normalized a culture of children being raised by unpartnered, unwed women. That is a powerful critique, raising serious policy implications for needs-based social programs. His identity and history give him special insight and license to voice this critique, but after a brief mention he moved on to other things. His brand is safe thoughts, not a policy criticism.

His PAC was a prodigious money-raiser. The NH Leadership Summit had a Scott PAC table. That's right: He was represented by his PAC. They had free merchandise. A PAC tee shirt is a strange, uniquely worthless, campaign expenditure. They were offered free and in quantity, if one wished to advertise a PAC. No one wore one. No one else took one. I wanted the photo.

If Republican primary voters want an earnest, low-key pious candidate -- and they don't --  they have the opportunity of choosing Pence or Burgum or Hutchison. But they aren't getting traction, either. 

Apparently Scott's campaign financing is being managed by a third party, and they see the handwriting. Besides, Scott has a senate job to get back to.

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