Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina has conjured a bugbear normally associated with identity-politics-obsessed leftists.
On Wednesday, Mace announced that she would buck the GOP majority and continue to support Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio for speaker of the House. Fine.
At the same time, however, Mace declared that she could not vote for the party’s nominee, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, due to Scalise’s past “white supremacist” connections.
Yikes.
Earlier on Wednesday, House Republicans held a closed-door vote to nominate a new speaker. Scalise prevailed over Jordan by a narrow 113-99 margin.
Mace, therefore, was not alone in preferring Jordan to Scalise, whom many perceive — fairly or otherwise — as the establishment choice.
“I will be voting for Jim Jordan for Speaker on the floor,” Mace tweeted Wednesday.
I will be voting for Jim Jordan for Speaker on the floor.
— Rep. Nancy Mace (@RepNancyMace) October 11, 2023
Also on Wednesday, in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Mace explained her vote. She did it, however, in a way that would make conservatives roll their eyes if it came from a Democrat.
“I personally cannot, in good conscience, vote for someone who attended a white supremacist conference and compared himself to David Duke,” Mace told Tapper in an clip posted to X.
Mace: I will vote for Jim Jordan on the floor. I personally cannot, in good conscience, vote for someone who attended a white supremacist conference and compared himself to David Duke. . pic.twitter.com/PETIPInLxk
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 11, 2023
For most of us, the “white supremacist” label has lost all meaning thanks to liberals’ incessant race-mongering.
Still, the first question any honest reader or listener must ask is always the same: Is it true?
On Monday — two days before Mace’s comment — University of Kentucky political science professor D. Stephen Voss came to Scalise’s defense.
In a commentary pieced published in the Kentucky Lantern, a news site affiliated with the state-politics-focused States Newsroom, Voss gave an insider’s view of Scalise designed to refute what Voss called the “Twitter mob’s accusations” regarding Scalise’s alleged past connections to white supremacists.
According to Voss, Scalise’s documented connection to Duke, a former GOP politician and grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, consists of once having lived in the same neighborhood as Duke’s campaign manager. “That’s it,” Voss wrote.
On those grounds, Voss concluded that “I may have more personal association with Duke than Scalise.”
Voss derived this conclusion in large part from personal observation.
“I covered Duke’s campaigns as a reporter, watched his legislative career as a Democratic aide, and analyzed his voting support as an academic,” Voss wrote.
As a former “Democratic aide,” Voss certainly has no great love for the GOP. But we need not speculate about his motives. The pertinent question here involves truth, and on that front the Scalise “white supremacist” accusation appears to lack even a historical basis in fact, let alone a present one.
In that case, what should we make of Mace’s comment?
Taking a charitable view, we might regard it as part of an overzealous campaign for her preferred speaker candidate. The GOP divide over a new speaker, after all, remains substantial.
In the same Wednesday interview with Tapper, for instance, Mace insisted that even some Democrats “trust” Jordan.
“I’ve actually talked to Democrats who trust him at his word. I don’t think that’s out of the realm of possibility,” Mace said of the prospect that some Democrats could vote Jordan for speaker.
An incredulous Tapper asked Mace to “name one Democrat from Congress that trusts Jim Jordan.”
“I’m not gonna name people off the record. They trust him more than they trust the former speaker, in my private conversations with Democrats. I will say that,” Mace replied.
Mace: There are Democrats who trust Jordan
Tapper: Jim Jordan?
Mace: Yes
Tapper: From Ohio?
Mace: Yes
Tapper: Name one pic.twitter.com/22QdZLARx2
— Acyn (@Acyn) October 11, 2023
One struggles to imagine Democrats voting for Jordan without suffering excommunication from the party. Thus, perhaps Mace simply exaggerated and went too far in stumping for her preferred candidate.
On the other hand, the uncharitable view of this “white supremacist” nonsense involves a pattern of Mace’s dubious recent behavior.
In July, for instance, she appeared at a prayer breakfast and joked about fornication.
Then, in late September, she lost her composure and used vulgarity while addressing Democrats during an impeachment inquiry hearing.
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Finally, in a move inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic novel “The Scarlet Letter”, she appeared on Tuesday wearing a white shirt “branded” with an “A” in bold red, an allusion to Hawthorne’s literary protagonist, Hester Prynne, who committed adultery and then had to wear the red “A” as punishment.
Mace wore the shirt, she said, due to “being a woman and being demonized for my vote and voice.” Last week, Mace joined seven other Republicans in voting to oust then-speaker Kevin McCarthy.
In the case of both the prayer breakfast and impeachment hearing, Mace appears guilty primarily of poor judgment.
The “white supremacist” charge against Scalise, however, coupled with the scarlet “A” stunt, raises questions about her willingness to use shopworn and dangerous leftist identity-politics tactics.
Perhaps — reverting once more to the charitable view — she simply has decided to employ those tactics against anyone she perceives as connected to the establishment.
According to that view, her use of identity politics would qualify as ironic. After all, the establishment and its media minions regularly slander dissenters with “sexist” and “white supremacist” labels.
Either way, she plans to vote for Jordan. At the moment, that constitutes the most important Mace-related piece of news.
As for what to make of the congresswoman’s rhetoric and overall pattern of behavior, that remains an open question.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
