NAACP Official Compares Black GOP Senator to Ventriloquist's Dummy

Identity politics in South Carolina

An NAACP official suggested Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only black Republican in the Senate, is a GOP puppet.

"A ventriloquist can always find a good dummy," said Rev. William Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP. "The extreme right wing down here finds a black guy to be senator … and then he goes to Washington, D.C., and articulates the agenda of the Tea Party."

The comments by Barber, ahead of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, were first reported by The State newspaper in Columbia, S.C.