THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

You discover things about your colleagues and party when you go to work. One thing they don't say out loud too often is that they expect you to vote like a white man.

U.S. Sen. Tim Scott has a message for the conservatives excoriating him for opposing Thomas Farr’s confirmation as a federal judge: They ought not challenge the conclusion of the Senate’s only black Republican that the one-time nominee has a troubling record on race.

Scott, R-S.C., is doubling down in his opposition to Farr over concerns about the Raleigh, N.C., lawyer’s history on race relations. He said his worries were not alleviated by a Wednesday meeting between the two men on Capitol Hill — convened as a courtesy to North Carolina Republican U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, a Farr ally.

The meeting coincided with a letter that 31 conservative leaders, activists, elected officials and attorneys sent to Scott Tuesday in Farr’s defense. In the three-page memo, they urged Scott to reconsider his position, arguing a smear campaign was launched by “unprincipled left-wing activists who hate Tom” and suggesting Scott was complicit in the partisan attack.

“In these difficult days, when allegations of racism are carelessly, and all too often deliberately, thrown about without foundation, the result is not racial healing, but greater racial polarization,” they wrote. “Joining with those who taunt every political opponent a ‘racist’ as a partisan political tactic to destroy their reputations is not helpful to the cause of reconciliation.”

Scott fired back.

“For some reason the authors of this letter choose to ignore ... facts, and instead implicate that I have been co-opted by the left and am incapable of my own decision making,” Scott said in a statement to McClatchy, adding he votes for Republican judicial nominees “99 percent of the time.”

“Why they have chosen to expend so much energy on this particular nomination I do not know, but what I do know is they have not spent anywhere near as much time on true racial reconciliation efforts, decrying comments by those like (Republican U.S. Rep.) Steve King, or working to move our party together towards a stronger, more unified future,” Scott continued, referring to the Iowa congressman who recently suggested he was sympathetic to white supremacists in a New York Times interview.

It is hard to believe that Sen Scott was not aware of what he is currently facing when he became a Republican. And now he has to work out why he remains a Republican.