Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, a 2024 GOP presidential candidate, is running a new radio ad in Iowa targeting Christian conservatives with a promise to support a 15-week federal abortion ban.
Mr. Scott is among several candidates who could use a strong showing in the Iowa caucuses as a springboard in the race. He is looking to raise his profile with the social and religious conservatives who traditionally make up the lion’s share of the party’s caucus-goers.
“As president, I will sign the most pro-life legislation that reaches my desk. Our immediate priority should be passing a national 15-week limit on abortion while we support Republican-led states that do even more to protect life,” Mr. Scott says in the “Sanctity of Life” ad.
“The Biden liberals support abortion up until the moment of birth. I’m running for president to stop their radical agenda and create a culture of life in America.”
Mr. Scott is in the early stages of introducing himself to voters as a happy warrior for the conservative cause.
The 57-year-old is telling voters that his life story — the son of a single mom raised in poverty in the Deep South who rose above his circumstances to become the first African-American senator to win election in the South since Reconstruction — undercuts the left’s insistence that the U.S. is a racist nation and shows that anything is possible with grit and perseverance.
But Mr. Scott is languishing in the polls and has yet to break through in a race that has been dominated by former President Donald Trump.
Mr. Trump’s rivals have seized on the issue of abortion as a way to separate themselves from the former president, who finished second in Iowa behind Sen. Ted Cruz in 2016 in part because Christian conservatives had reservations about his no-holds-barred style, checkered personal past and previous support for abortion.
Mr. Trump’s refusal to spell out where he stands on a federal abortion ban has opened him up to additional criticism from the religious right, which was shocked and dismayed to hear him blame the GOP’s disappointing showing in the midterm elections on candidates pushing too hard on the abortion issue.
Gov. Ron DeSantis has tried to seize on the opening, questioning Mr. Trump’s commitment to the controversial 6-week abortion ban that he signed as governor of Florida.
Former Vice President Mike Pence, meanwhile, has challenged Mr. Trump and the other Republicans running to rally behind a 15-week national ban.
Mr. Scott is in a similar place.
“Senator Tim Scott is a Christian conservative who believes that life is a gift from God,” the narrator says in the Scott radio ad. “Scott has a 100% pro-life voting record, and he fought to put three new conservative justices on the Supreme Court sending Roe v. Wade to the ash heap of history.”
The jury is out on whether Mr. Scott or anyone else in the race can cut into Mr. Trump’s base of support or peel away pro-life voters from other candidates.
Mr. Trump proved the naysayers wrong in 2016 when he overcame the doubts of Christian voters by vowing to nominate conservative justices to the Supreme Court and then tapping Mr. Pence, a longtime pro-life leader, as his running mate.
Mr. Trump fulfilled his promise, nominating justices who flipped the ideological bent of the Supreme Court to 5-4 conservative, and opening the door for the overturning of Roe. V Wade, the landmark ruling that provided a constitutional right to abortion
“We terminated Roe v. Wade,” Mr. Trump said over the weekend at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s annual conference. “Every child born and unborn is a sacred gift from God.”
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.