Presidential primaries rarely bring out the best examples of party unity. Even Ronald Reagan dispensed with his famous Eleventh Commandment — “Thou shalt not speak ill of thy fellow Republican” — when circumstance required. All the same, Senator Tim Scott’s decision to join the chorus of left-wing concern-trolling about Florida’s new educational standards is worth noting. It tells us something about Scott, of course. It also risks undermining Florida’s role as a national conservative model.

The case on its merits is simple enough, and recounted ably in our recent editorial. Vice President Kamala Harris, NAACP President Derrick Johnson, and others have charged the Florida Department of Education with promulgating academic standards that minimize the brutality of American slavery. Even to call the evidence slender would be too generous. The whole complaint is a smear manufactured out of whole cloth. More so, the fabrication is transparent. The entire allegation rests on a single line that calls for instruction to note “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” This is true as a historical matter, and is also pointed out in the AP’s own framework. Meanwhile, the standards as a whole do an incredibly thorough job of teaching the depraved history of American chattel slavery and its attendant abuses.

Cynical potshots from the left are to be expected. More surprising was the echo they received from certain quarters of the right — most notably (as mentioned above) from Scott. The presidential contender insisted there was “no silver lining” in American slavery, a point he implied that Governor DeSantis may not understand: “People have bad days. Sometimes they regret what they say, and we should ask them again to clarify their positions.”

There is of course an element of personal interest in all this. Scott would, after all, like to be president. While a little rough-and-tumble is to be expected in a presidential primary, providing political cover to the Left’s smears of Florida’s serious educational reform efforts is not. Pragmatism is one thing; feeding into a media frenzy is another. If Senator Scott would like conservatives to trust him with the presidency, he needs to make that case without feeding into lazy tropes used by the Left to demonize us. In doing so, Scott both alienates would-be supporters and unfairly tarnishes the blueprint that Florida conservatives have been building for the last decade.

Progressives have followed a simple playbook for years — test their agenda in a large state like California or New York, and watch it spread mimetically across the nation. Florida’s forceful approach to conservative governance over the past five years has played a similar but positive role. By pushing the Overton window in a conservative direction, Florida has functioned both as a policy laboratory and as a shield for smaller conservative states. Because of Florida’s size, conservatives there can resist outside pressure from the national media or corporate interests in a way smaller states cannot.

If progressives can successfully infuse a whiff of racism into this conservative project, its future as a model will be seriously compromised. Nothing will accomplish this more quickly than the narrative that respected figures on both sides of the aisle view Florida’s curriculum as minimizing racism. Scott does not want this to happen, I’m sure, but progressives do not care and will not ask his permission before weaponizing his words.

Senator Scott has the air of a statesman. If he truly is, he will admit his mistake.