While I am not exactly sure when I first became aware of her, I seem to remember that I liked Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) when it happened. I say, “I seem to remember,” because I can’t think of anything I like about her now.
Usually there is a defining moment that makes me intensely like or dislike a politician. Mace is an anomaly — she just sort of crept over to my bad side. Specific incidents are probably difficult for me to point at because she doesn’t bring anything substantive to the Republican table. That is, unless you’re a big fan of politicians who have a penchant for getting on camera and saying dumb things.
As I became more aware of Mace’s shtick, I realized that she is one of those D.C. clichés who are willing to leg-hump any position on an issue if it will generate a fundraising email that afternoon. Yeah, there are a lot of them, but Mace grates on me more than most. It’s one thing to be shifty on the issues, but Nancy Mace is rather fluid in her allegiance to her colleagues in the GOP as well. Any House Republican whose name Mace can easily recall while on camera is in danger of being thrown under the nearest bus if the congresswoman finds it politically expedient to do so.
I get the feeling that Nancy Mace has never seen a Republican back that she hasn’t thought at least one time about stabbing.
My friend and colleague Matt Vespa wrote a couple of posts over at Townhall earlier in the month that perfectly illustrate some of my frustrations with Rep. Mace. Both have to do with interviews Mace gave to CNN, the preferred network of politicians who have no guiding principles whatsoever.
The first post finds the congresswoman from South Carolina being hoist by her own petard over some comments she made about Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) during last January’s speaker battle regarding fundraising:
Mace was one of eight Republicans to side with Democrats to take the gavel away from McCarthy. Now, she claims, and she’s probably right, that the establishment is going after her fundraising, which is why she plugged her website during what would become a disastrous interview.
Collins had the receipts, where Mace excoriated Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), who filed the motion to vacate against McCarthy on Tuesday, for fundraising off the multiple rounds he put the House chamber through when voting on California’s initial speakership bid at the start of the new Congress in January. Mace called Gaetz a fraud, saying he diminished the constitutional process with every fundraising email he sent during that multiple-ballot circus earlier this year.
All Mace could do was tell people she was not fundraising from the motion to vacate while telling people to visit her website.
I’m sure that Mace was urging people to check out her website just so they could see what a bang-up job her digital team was doing.
A Republican politician in Congress has to be spectacularly awful at his or her job in order to get legitimately cornered on something by one of the hacks at CNN. One of the young’uns in Mace’s office should teach her the internet.
A post that Matt wrote last week really showcases what — as he put it — “a piece of work” Mace is:
Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) trotted into House GOP meetings on the Hill regarding selecting a new speaker wearing a red “A” on her shirt, referencing The Scarlet Letter. Mace was one of eight Republicans who voted with Democrats to boot Speaker Kevin McCarthy on October 2. Since then, it’s been a circus in the House. Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Steve Scalise (R-LA) have emerged as frontrunners, with Scalise slightly ahead, though no one has the votes right now.
Mace isn’t backing Scalise because he made an appearance at a white nationalist conference in 2002, which is a dubious claim:
Matt then shares a tweet by my friend and veteran political operative Ellen Carmichael that debunks Mace’s sad excuse.
As I wrote last week, Steve Scalise literally took a bullet for the Republican team. It’s perfectly acceptable that other Republicans might disagree with him on policy. Rather than voice principled opposition to Scalise, Nancy Mace decided to smear him with a lie. On CNN. More from Matt on the real capper to this story:
Yet, Mace received $10,000 from Scalise’s PAC and touted his endorsement during her re-election bid.
Like I said to Stephen Green and Ed Morrissey on last Friday’s episode of our VIP Gold “Five O’Clock Somewhere” live chat, this woman has gotten on my last nerve. She’s beyond awful. The last thing the House GOP needs right now is an unprincipled shill running around flapping her gums to unfriendly media outlets. I will wholeheartedly support anyone for the speaker gig who can rein in Nancy Mace before her idiot mouth makes things even messier than they already are.
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