A little over a month ago, when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was asked what the Republican agenda in the upper chamber would look like moving forward, the octogenarian seven-term senator told reporters, “That is a very good question. And I’ll let you know when we take it back.”

Some people are not that stupid, and realized that going into another national election without a plan (as the GOP did in 2020) would not be likely to bear good fruit. But there is a good deal of ground between smarter than Mitch McConnell and smart, and it is there that we find Rick Scott.

The junior senator from Florida and chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee released an “11 Point Plan to Rescue America” this week, an obvious effort to fill the void left by a bet-hedging McConnell. Scott’s plan opens with dire warnings about the radical left’s anti-American designs:

Among the things they plan to change or destroy are: American history, patriotism, border security, the nuclear family, gender, traditional morality, capitalism, fiscal responsibility, opportunity, rugged individualism, Judeo-Christian values, dissent, free speech, color blindness, law enforcement, religious liberty, parental involvement in public schools, and private ownership of firearms.

In fairness, I wouldn’t mind destroying at least six of those things. But Rick Scott has chosen them as the defining features of the American experiment, and he poses an apocalyptic question: “Is this the beginning of the end of America?”

An answer on the next page, in red capital letters superimposed over a Constitution licked by flames: “THE HOUR IS LATE FOR AMERICA.” No argument here. But Scott’s plan of action leaves much to be desired.

Take, for instance, point 1—education, which understandably tops the list given recent trends. The short version:

Our kids will say the pledge of allegiance, salute the Flag, learn that America is a great country, and choose the school that best fits them. We will inspire patriotism and stop teaching the revisionist history of the radical left; our kids will learn about the wisdom of the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the founding fathers. Public schools will focus on the 3 R’s, not indoctrinate children with critical race theory or any other political ideology.

The senator rather blatantly contradicts himself, promising that “our kids will learn about the wisdom of the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the founding fathers” in one breath and demanding in the next that public schools “not indoctrinate children with critical race theory or any other political ideology.” Yes, children should be taught the virtues of the founders and the wisdom of the constitution they drafted, but it would be both counterproductive and dishonest to pretend that this could be done disconnected from any political ideology. Warmed-over civics classes without sincere appeals to truth and discussions of the moral order, appealing to or resting on the fiction of value neutrality, will only lead us right back here before too long.

Elsewhere, Scott is more straightforward about his sources of authority:

Men are men, women are women, and unborn babies are babies. We believe in science: Men and women are biologically different, “male and female He created them.” Modern technology has confirmed that abortion takes a human life.

He adds:

Facts are facts, the earth is round, the sun is hot, there are two genders, and abortion stops a beating heart. To say otherwise is to deny science.

I’m not so sure about those first three claims, but the latter two are certainly correct. Yet Scott insists on presenting them in the coldly rationalist language of our enemies, ceding all strategic ground in a fast dash to a pyrrhic victory. Democrats are the real science deniers. Checkmate, liberals.

On the most important of all political issues, Senator Scott manages to say:

Abortions are a tragedy. We must make adoption accessible and affordable.

• We currently make it very expensive for prospective parents to adopt, even though many kids desperately need families. This is insane and we will change it.
• We will help low income single women who are considering abortion choose life instead, by paying all costs associated with carrying the child to term and placing the child for adoption.
• We will STOP Democrat Party efforts to discriminate against faith-based adoption agencies. We will do just the opposite. Most faith-based groups provide far superior service than government agencies do. We will utilize and empower them.

If that seems underwhelming, the subject is revisited again in the next point. This time, the senator asserts more directly:

Abortion kills human children. To deny that is to deny science.

Whether you believe in God or not, as a civilized people who accept science, we must protect babies, born and unborn, from all acts of violence.

All government policies will favor having more babies adopted, not aborted.

There is not a word about Roe v. Wade, not a word about outlawing the most heinous atrocity in the history of human civilization, not a word about how the supposedly pro-life party will actually fight at the most crucial juncture for the unborn in almost half a century. Adoption is important, yes, and the reforms Scott vaguely hints at will be a necessary adjunct to the abolition of infanticide. But the heart of the matter is almost entirely ignored.

Likewise on gender, which the senator restricts to a few particular areas of concern. One is perhaps the most pressing, but in elevating it to the level of appropriate urgency, Scott bizarrely and unnecessarily cedes the entirety of the remaining terrain: “No doctor will be allowed to perform irreversible surgical or gender-altering procedures on any minor child. Once they become adults, they can do what they wish.” The other is an extremely minor issue, but one that political operatives have realized polls in our favor: girls’ sports.

In other domains, Scott waffles violently between sound reformism and dead-consensus hackery, sometimes in the same sentence. Take foreign policy:

We are Americans, not globalists. America will be dependent on NO other country. We will conduct no trade that takes away jobs or displaces American workers. Countries who oppose us at the UN will get zero financial help from us. We will be energy independent and build supply chains that never rely on our adversaries. We will only help countries that are willing to defend themselves, like Israel.

The agenda even includes a call to “prohibit debt ceiling increases absent a declaration of war.” Surely that provision does not establish any perverse incentives.

Then there is criminal justice, with regards to which Scott issues just and pressing calls to “eliminate no-knock warrants in any case that does not involve violent crime” and “increase penalties for spousal abuse and failure to pay child support.” Yet he also demands we “stop all efforts to defund or ‘re-imagine’ policing,” precluding any efforts to reform a key governmental function that is, in fact, grossly inefficient, ineffective, and ripe for grave abuse.

Elsewhere, too much zeal for reform leads the senator to equally foolhardy conclusions. He promises to “enact term limits for the Washington ruling class—12-year limits for Congress and government bureaucrats. (Exceptions for national security reasons only.)” The carveout for “national security” is either astonishingly stupid or promised with full knowledge of the problems it would exacerbate. Even beyond the Blob, though, the unintended consequences of term limits, especially congressional ones, are exactly as severe as you might expect from a policy so fervently advocated by well-meaning centrist midwits.

Even more shortsightedly, Scott’s plan contains a suggestion that “All federal legislation sunsets in 5 years. If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again.” A far cry from the conservative preference for “few laws, seldom changed.”

Yet on some questions Scott’s plan is admirably uncomplicated, with promises to “drastically simplify the tax code, and eliminate the advantages of those who can afford tax lawyers and lobbyists” and “immediately cut the IRS funding and workforce by 50%.” Long overdue.

But this is counterbalanced by perhaps the worst point in Rick Scott’s 60-page agenda: “All Americans should pay some income tax to have skin in the game, even if a small amount. Currently over half of Americans pay no income tax.” Of course, the real problem with the fact that one half of Americans do not pay income tax is the fact that the other half do. Expanded income taxation would amount to an arbitrary tax on the bottom half of American society simply for existing. It would be politically disastrous, economically destructive, and morally indefensible. Yet it is typical of an economic vision that contains nothing more than a vague plan to sell some federal holdings and a few limp assurances that jobs will be kept in America.

In all likelihood, Biden-era chaos will deliver a majority to the Republicans no matter what they do. But if the best answer the GOP has to the shakeups of the last few years is a return to the pseudo-libertarian economics and social-issue spinelessness of the dead consensus—just with a slightly angrier tone—then their time in power will be as short as it is pointless.

Don’t take my word for it. In his introductory letter to the “plan to rescue America,” Senator Scott warns:

If Republicans return to Washington’s business as usual, if we have no bigger plan than to be a speed bump on the road to America’s collapse, we don’t deserve to govern.