Republicans say they're working on a policing bill -- but a conservative says they've got nothing

Republicans have tasked Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) with developing a bill to respond to the demand for police reform.

Conservative Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin wrote Thursday that the reason Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has forced Scott to handle it is that he is one of only two Black Republican officials in Congress.

"Goodness knows they have made little effort to try to educate themselves about systemic racism — as many continue to deny it even exists," wrote Rubin.

She wondered if the GOP would even be willing to participate in a conversation about race with Scott.

"Could Scott tell his colleagues what needs to be said?" Rubin asked. "Doing so would mean explaining to colleagues that their minimization of a federal role in addressing police issues smacks of the states’ rights excuses that bigots have used in the past to prevent nosy federal officials from getting involved in their communities."

Her example came from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who passed the buck, saying that local communities should decide whether they think there's a policing problem and what to do about it. Systematic change at the federal level, like banning the chokehold, isn't of interest to Republicans.

“It’s my view that the best reforms need to happen at the local level. That is where the community can help drive them as opposed to just one national standard across the board. If there is something we can do here that makes sense, I will certainly look at it,” Rubio said.

For Scott to craft a bill means he would ultimately be forced to explain to his colleagues that they never had any credibility in dealing with race issues, Rubin explained.

"Scott would need to tell Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) that objecting to anti-lynching legislation in 2020 is as grotesque an example of racial callousness as one could imagine," she wrote. "Scott would also be compelled to tell his colleagues that in refusing to take up the Heroes Act, which would fund testing and state and local governments, they are once against disproportionately harming African Americans — just as their ludicrous effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act in the middle of a pandemic would do. He would be obliged to tell Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) that proposing the military be unleashed on civilians and give 'no quarter' is akin to recommending the killing of protesters, who are predominately African American."

Scott would need to explain to his Republican colleagues that move to suppress black votes hurts communities when they do things like their "opposition to mail-in voting, voter ID laws (in the absence of significant fraud), denial of sufficient polling facilities in African American neighborhoods, gerrymandering (to limit the voting power of nonwhites) and voter roll purges."

Further, for Republicans to get "woke" they would have to come out in opposition to President Donald Trump, and they're too afraid to go that far.

"Scott cannot fashion a remotely adequate Republican response to Floyd’s killing because Trump and his Republican Party are a central part of and, indeed, aggravate the problem — along with their cadre of right-wing white nationalists and run-of-the-mill apologists," Rubin closed. "The American response to racism requires the political obliteration of the Republican Party as we know it. That starts with voting them out of office, up and down the ballot, in November."

Read the full editorial at the Washington Post.