The Republican Representative of South Carolina’s first congressional district, Nancy Mace, has a biography that celebrates perseverance. A high-school dropout, she earned a GED. Then graduated (magna cum laude) from The Citadel, South Carolina’s venerable military school — the first woman to do so from its Corps of Cadets. She added a Master's Degree from the University of Georgia.
In 2008 she founded The Mace Group, a consulting concern. In 2014, she turned to politics and finished a distant fifth to incumbent Linsey Graham in the Republican Senate primary. In 2017, she won a special election for a SC state house seat. In 2020, she was elected to Congress.
Mace was hard to put in a box. She is both a dyed-in-the-wool conservative — and pro-LGBTQ and pro-conservation while supporting exceptions to Republican abortion absolutism. She has also promoted Trump — and been the victim of his vituperation.
In 2016, she worked on Trump’s South Carolina campaign. Yet, in 2021, she criticized him for instigating the Jan 6 Capitol riots. She was one of only seven Republicans who publicly refused to challenge the results of the 2020 election.
So displeased was the thin-skinned narcissist that he supported her 2022 primary opponent, Katie Arrington — a woman who, ironically, the Pentagon fired for mishandling classified material. Trump was blunt in offering his opinion of Mace’s apostasy.
“Katie Arrington is running against an absolutely terrible candidate, Congresswoman Nancy Mace, whose remarks and attitude have been devastating for her community, and not at all representative of the Republican Party, to which she has been very disloyal.”
Mace nevertheless thought filming a campaign spot in front of Trump Tower in NYC was a winning idea. In a breathless video, she offered a groveling hagiography to the man who had kicked her in the ass. Trump publicly scoffed at her toadying. Regardless, Trump’s disastrous 2022 endorsement record left Mace unmolested as she increased her winning margin.
However — and this is where it gets incomprehensible to the regular viewer, Mace has unconditionally backed the man who had sneered at her and spat on what he thought was her political grave. Gone is her reasoned appraisal of Trump’s political vandalism. She is now four square in his corner.
In an interview with Fox News anchor Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures, Mace accused President Joe Biden of wanting to give Trump a “death sentence” in the stolen document affair. She also offered a conspiracy theory to explain the timing of the charges — as Special Prosecutor Jack Smith announced it on the same day the FBI allowed the House Oversight Committee to view an allegation of a bribery scheme involving President Biden. She told Bartiromo,
“The day that we got access to this 1023 form showing bribery between Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and Ukraine, they indict Donald Trump again. Every time the Oversight Committee has evidence of corruption, bribery, money laundering on the Biden family, they indict Donald Trump.”
Mace's claim that the 1023 form showed “bribery between Joe Biden and Hunter Biden and Ukraine” is pure bullshit — 1023 forms merely document raw, unverified ‘information’ from confidential sources. They do not corroborate any of the allegations.
If that was not enough hyperbole, Mace added.
“Joe Biden wants to give Donald Trump a death sentence for documents. He’s facing hundreds of years for mishandling documents and they want him to die in jail. And yet Hillary Clinton’s standing free today.”
She is shameless. Biden has offered no opinion on a sentence length for Trump. And even if he had, his views are irrelevant. The Judge decides the sentence within published guidelines.
As for her toeing the 'what about Clintion' line, Hillary is free today because Mace's teammates could not dig up any dirt on her during the four years they ran the DoJ as a personal investigative agency.
These unmoored ramblings are not an isolated brain fart. Last Thursday, Mace told Harris Faulkner on Fox News,
“Two days ago, I said this [Trump’s indictment] would happen on the day we either held in contempt Christopher Wray with the FBI, or we got access to those documents. I predicted it, and it came true. This is a banana republic. I just can not believe this is actually happening. He’s trying to take out his political opponent.
Every time Biden comes under the microscope, every time we show corruption by Joe Biden and his family there’s an indictment on Donald Trump… I can’t believe this is happening.”
It is psycho-babble. And dangerous.
Liberals want an America that reflects their values. However, even the most committed progressive understands — or should — that politics is cyclical. Bad things happen. Whoever is in charge when bad things happen will often lose the next election. The voters turn to the party not in power, hoping that switching captains will course-correct a misdirected ship of state.
In many countries, a smorgasbord of political parties reflects the variety of philosophies embraced by different groups of voters. A-la-mode alliances of convenience coalesce to form governments. Political parties that attract even a small but passionate base may have a say in the running of the country
The US does not have that option. Despite the quadrennial emergence of look-at-me, third-party candidates, America — barring a change of voting procedures (eg proportional representation and ranked-choice voting) — has only two parties with a shot at being in charge. To that end, even liberals want a sane right-wing party.
Sadly, sanity does not exist in the age of MAGA.
This lack of rationality raises a question, can Republicans return to being a party interested in governing? Or are they committed to a murder/suicide pact, with the Republic being the victim of their homicidal impulses?
Hope rests in right-wing, anti-MAGAs represented by such groups as the Lincoln Project, a few Senators, members of the center-right "Republican Governance Group," and the vestigial remains of Rockefeller Republicans.
At one point, Nancy Mace looked like she might have a leading role in a potential return-to-sanity GOP. Now she has tied her political future to a Republican party that will not cut ties with its past. God help us all.