Tim Scott for Veep!

President Donald J. Trump should select Sen. Tim Scott (R-South Carolina) as his running mate. Trump-Scott 2024 would be a juggernaut. Scott would serve Trump ably as vice president. He is well positioned to step in for Trump, should he become sidelined.

Long before any of that, this duo must get elected. Here, Scott looks uniquely promising.

A May 15-16 Harvard-Harris survey of 1,660 registered voters discovered that, among seven potential veep choices, Scott is the only one who makes Americans more likely to back Trump, by an additional 6 percent. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida), with 0 percent, does not move the needle. Gov. Doug Burgum (R – North Dakota) curbs enthusiasm for Trump by 6 percent.

My American Spectator colleague David Catron is not buying the Burgum boomlet: “The last thing Trump needs in a running mate is an aging white guy from a state he won by 33 points in 2020.”

Burgum also advances the proposition that two billionaires are not always better than one — especially since Burgum could deliver so little in the hunt for 270 Electoral College votes. (Three down, 267 to go!) And his state will go GOP, with or without Burgum on the ticket. North Dakota last voted Democrat in 1964, when it went all the way with LBJ. The Peace Garden State will back Biden in November … as soon as Massachusetts boards the Trump Train.

Tim Scott’s broad appeal — across the Palmetto State’s cities, suburbs, and rural towns — helps explain why he regularly outperforms other top statewide Republican contenders. In November 2014, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham was reelected with 54.3 percent of the vote. Gov. Nikki Haley scored a second term with 55.9 percent of the ballots. Tim Scott bested them both, with 61.1 percent support among the electorate.

In 2016, Donald J. Trump won the White House, partially thanks to 54.9 percent of South Carolina’s vote. That same Election Night, Scott won 60.6 percent.

And in 2022, Gov. Henry McMaster earned four more years with 58.0 percent of the vote. Sen. Tim Scott that evening won six more years, with a 62.9 percent victory.

While Scott was a low-key presidential candidate, he has been one of Trump’s best surrogates, in person and on-air. He is upbeat, energetic, informative, and persuasive. Those qualities will serve Trump well on the hustings, via Scott’s debate with Kamala Harris, and as his chief advocate as 50th vice president of the United States.

Tim Scott’s experience in the House and Senate, including his work as ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, his role as a member of the Finance and Foreign Affairs Committees, and his impact on the Opportunity Zones and related tax cuts that he has sponsored or endorsed make him the right man to help President Trump push the Make America Great Again agenda through Congress.

While South Carolina’s nine electoral votes have not gone Democrat since 1976, Scott could attract far more electoral votes elsewhere.

Scott is not the sort of black man whose high school overlooked the ocean and who weekends on the slopes at Aspen and Park City — not that there’s anything wrong with that. Scott grew up poor, with a single mom, in public housing. Anyone who challenges his “black authenticity” is a certified bigot and a mindless one at that.

Scott justifiably holds these race critics in contempt:

“I am living proof that America is the land of opportunity, and not a land of oppression,” Scott has said. “For those of you on the left, you can call me a prop, you can call me a token, you can call me the N-word, you can question my Blackness, you can even call me ‘Uncle Tim.’ Just understand: Your words are no match for my evidence. The truth of my life disproves your lies.”

The mere presence of Tim Scott on the GOP ticket would consolidate the recent rightward shift of black voters. They are marching toward Trump in stunning numbers.

CNN’s data analyst Harry Enten was visibly shocked on June 17, when he discussed an aggregate of network polls that captured Trump’s swelling share of the black vote. At this point in 2020, Trump had 7 percent of the black vote, before scoring 12 percent that November, according to exit surveys by Edison Research. Trump now has 21 percent support among black voters — triple his position in June 2020.

Meanwhile, excitement for Biden among black voters has vanished. Overall, he has plunged from 86 percent at this point in 2020 to 70 percent in 2024. With those age 50+, he has slid from 83 percent to 74 percent. Biden has collapsed among blacks under 50, from 80 percent to 37 percent.

“I’ve just never seen anything like this. I’m like speechless,” Enten said. “We’re careening towards historic performance for a Republican presidential candidate, the likes of which we have not seen in six decades.”

Scott would solidify and enhance the 20 percent or so of the black vote that consistently has backed Trump in polls since last fall. Trump-Scott could secure 25 percent of the black vote; 35 percent no longer seems beyond imagination. If that many black Americans also vote GOP downballot, Republicans should keep the House and capture the Senate from New York’s Chuck Schumer and the Biden Democrats.

And if Trump-Scott spend four more years satisfying these new Republicans, a significant and swelling cohort of black voters will stay GOP. With the cornerstone of its base reduced to rubble, the Democrat Party will wither away and, to quote Friedrich Engels, enter “the museum of antiquities, next to the spinning wheel and the bronze axe.”

Stylistically, Scott would be the cream in Trump’s coffee. While some people find the former president a tad hot and strong, Scott is relaxed and soothing. Stirred together, these two would make a fine blend, and complement each other — as running mates and governing partners should.

Scott also would comfort nervous whites. Suburban women and others might believe the garbage they hear daily on MSNBC and The View: Trump is a black-hating racist monster — a Klansman in a bright-red tie. Scott exposes this as the grotesque lie that it always has been. Some white voters will think to themselves, “I heard Trump was a racist. But he picked Tim Scott as his V.P. So, the Democrats lied to me about this, too. To Hell with them! I will go ahead and vote for Trump.”

If such thoughts cross at least, say, 200,000 minds in Scottsdale, Arizona; Marietta, Georgia; Grosse Pointe, Michigan; Henderson, Nevada; and Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, Trump-Scott will win the White House.

Given his personal integrity, legislative experience, increasingly polished rhetorical skills, and everything he would gain while riding shotgun to Trump, Tim Scott would make a suitable successor to the 45/47th POTUS. America’s future would be quite bright, indeed, if, on January 20, 2029, President Donald J. Trump hands the keys to the White House to President-elect Tim Scott.

Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News contributor.

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