Rep. Bob Good of
Virginia, leader of the far-right Freedom Caucus (i.e. “free” to be a
self-serving jerk), departed with a “farewell speech” since losing his seat
after being beaten in the Republican primary as “punishment” for supporting Ron
DeSantis over Trump. He tried to put the usual spin on why Republicans like
himself always seem to do nothing when they control Congress (except pass tax cuts for the rich), even when there
is a Republican in the White House: "Most of what we do here in
Washington is bad, certainly unconstitutional, unjustified and often downright
harmful."
He’s right, but not
in the way we assume he implies. The utterly shameless subservient support (with
a tiny few exceptions) of Republicans for a convicted felon who has committed
in what in an earlier time would be regarded treasonous actions shows there is
no abyss deep enough for which Republicans will allow themselves to fall into.
The Republican Party has been taken over by cranks and crackpots without a
sliver of human decency, and as this opinion piece in an Iowa newspaper last
year tells us 1,
Republicans don’t seem to have time for anything save wasting taxpayer money in
barroom brawls amongst themselves and “investigations” that result in nothing
consequential, merely publicity stunts to get themselves on Fox News or “impress”
Trump—the more loony, the “better.”
Of course,
Democrats have (or had, after they “retire” after the current term) their own loons,
like Manchin and Sinema, the latter who missed three weeks of votes and then
made a “dramatic” entry just to vote against a Democrat as head of the NLRB,
just before the missing Manchin “rushed in” to do the same. Both have their “priorities”:
Manchin is beholden to his state’s coal industry, to which of course mine
workers’ safety is not exactly a priority, and Sinema will have her lucrative corporate
lobbying career as a reward for her beholdenness to business interests.
But that is all
relative. Republicans in the House especially give one pause about the mental
health of the country, or at least people in “red” states. Take for example one individual who may be
crazier than all the rest, but has received only sporadic attention which she craves:
Rep. Nancy Mace, a Republican from South Carolina, who defends her despicable behavior
and pronouncements behind the hypocritical shield of female “victimization.” Every
criticism of her is immediately proclaimed as such. Mace isn’t the only white
female Republican who uses her gender as a defense against charges of racism
and bigotry, but Mace is in a whole new “category.”
“I work on a lot of civil rights
issues” she once declared. “I was the ranking member of the civil rights
subcommittee last session on oversight. Due process is a really important
issue.” What this fanatical anti-DEI and CRT opponent doesn’t mention is that
she means the “civil rights” and "due process" of white people, and more specifically for self-obsessed
white women like herself. The National Review pointed out that
Mace has also failed to mention that the subcommittee no longer exists: “She
helped lead the charge to disband it,” TNR
notes.
Mace furthered her hypocrisy by
claiming that “I take great pride as a white female Republican to address the
inadequacies in our country,” she said. But as TNR pointed out, she limits
this concern to her own particular demographic, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
pointed out
that Mace’s position appeared more valuable to her as a title to be
wielded over Democrats than an actual leadership role in safeguarding the
rights of minorities across the country. After all, the subcommittee did not
just cease to exist. Mace, along with Kentucky Representative and abortive
Biden impeachment architect James Comer, had overseen its elimination in early 2023.
Of course, Mace
has made it her whole reason for being these days to oppose the civil rights of
trans-gender people (I have my own doubts about this, but as long as they leave
me alone…). The other day Mace claimed she was “assaulted” by a trans-rights
supporter after a meeting of foster care advocates in an office building near
Capitol Hill. The alleged perpetrator was arrested by Capitol police. Mace
claimed that this was an example of an “unsafe environment” for women. End of
story, right?
Wrong. I mean,
this is Nancy Mace we are talking about here, who if she can’t walk into a PR stunt
to get herself on Fox News, she’ll invent one, as she apparently has done here
after the alleged “assault,” shown wearing an arm sling for “effect”:
Mace exposed
what she actually feels she was “assaulted” by with this post: “One new brace
for my wrist and some ice for my arm and it’ll heal just fine. The Capitol police
arrested the guy. Your tr*ns violence and threats on my life will only make me
double down. FAFO. #HoldTheLine,”
Yes, this is the
same Nancy Mace who decided to go after Rep. Sarah McBride, who is the only
openly “trans” individual in Congress. I suppose if McBride cut her hair she
would look, well, “mannish,” but to each their own. Both Mace and Marjorie Taylor
Green have gone on record as saying that they consider it “assault” if McBride
is allowed into female facilities, so we know that the word “assault” is more
psychological than physical; yet when they use the word assault, they want you
to assume it is a “physical” attack.
Mace claims she
was raped when she was 16, but never told the police or anyone else until 25
years later, and likely a made-up story when "memories" of "details" are dim, but just saying so is enough to bolster her victim “cred.” She also claimed she was “abused”
by her former fiancé; the only examples of this “abuse” she has mentioned was
when she caught him using a dating app on his phone, and when she felt “pushed”
for sex, bragging to a Christian forum before which she spoke that she denied
him said sex, using the excuse that she was preparing for a speaking engagement
at another Christian-themed meeting. Yes, she gave-up sex for you.
Mace, who as
late as 2021 claimed to be a supporter of LGBTQ rights, reversed course after
the election of McBride, and Mace’s crusade on the rights of one individual of
course displays her essential small-minded, hypocritical and narcissistic
nature. Last week, trans supporters staged a sit-in at the Capitol to protest
Mike Johnson’s acquiescence to Mace’s desires, which of course Mace called an “assault”
on her personally. Like the “Scarlet A” t-shirt she wore after shocking her own
staffers by voting for the removal of Kevin McCarthy from the House
speakership, Mace needed a “prop,” so she found a bullhorn to harangue the protestors to gain more attention to herself.
Not
surprisingly, there are those calling “bullshit” on Mace’s version of events, We
are told following the event, an award-winning advocate for foster children
named James McIntyre approached her, extended his hands to her, and she
voluntarily reached out hers to him and they shook hands. Nothing wrong there,
except that he made a comment that Mace took as a personal “assault,” telling
her that there were many trans-gender youth in foster care, and that they
needed her “support” too.
This is what
witnesses have stated they also saw and heard. Mace’s own staffers—and she has
had a revolving door of them—may have been skeptical of her story, so a couple
of them searched the office building, found McIntyre, asked him his version of
events, and decided to contact Capitol police anyways to stay on Mace’s “good
side.” Capitol police arrested McIntyre, probably because they knew if they
didn’t they wouldn’t hear the end of it from Mace or Fox News. McIntyre was released
the next day and told not to go near Mace again, more for his own good than hers,
no doubt.
The Huffington Post reports that the
attention-seeking Mace does not like all
the attention she has drummed-up in this case. This from a person who former
staffers say that among the many things in a toxic work environment they were forced to do was for each to come-up with several ideas to get
her “publicity,” preferably in front of a camera or on a news show. When questions arose
of her characterization of the encounter, she accused those disputing her story
(meaning witnesses who actually saw the encounter) of the hypocritical claim of “victim-shaming.”
After she “displayed”
herself wearing that arm sling, immediate ridicule on social media followed,
and a former staffer named Natalie Johnson opined that it was yet another of
Mace’s “pathetic ploys” for attention. “This is the same woman who told staff,
myself included, during Jan. 6 that she wanted to get ‘punched in the face’ by
a rioter so she could get on TV.”
But let’s be
honest: Nancy Mace has plenty of company in the House of Representatives, and
she isn’t the worst of them; in fact because her hypocrisy is so brazen, she
merely appears to be pathetic compared to MTG and Lauren Boebert. Unlike her
colleagues who don’t pretend to be supporters of, say, abortion rights, Mace
has been time and again confronted with her support of a rapist like Trump and
supporting bills with anti-abortion clauses, and she responds to suggestions of hypocrisy by
claiming that they are merely attempts to “shame” her. TNR points that on
This Week. When host George Stephanopolous asked Mace
how she can “square” her support for Trump with his being found liable for sexually
abusing E. Jean Carroll and then defaming her, Mace immediately began
repeatedly accusing Stephanopoulos of trying to “shame” her for being sexually
assaulted. When Stephanopolous reiterated that a jury had found Trump liable
for rape, a decision upheld by the presiding judge and then reinforced by a
second jury, Mace snapped,
“It was not a criminal court, number one. Number two, I live with shame, and
you’re asking me a question about my political choices, trying to shame me as a
rape victim, and I find it disgusting,”
I think what is “disgusting” is Mace inventing made-up “shame” from made-up stories to “shame” people
from attacking her constant lies and hypocrisies. But then again, in this age
of nihilism that Trump released from the Pandora’s Box, that is just a “taste”
of the shameless anti-democratic power-grabbing that is to come--save on a much, much larger scale.
Already House Republicans deliberately delayed for months passing a bill to increase judgeships in the hope that Trump would be elected and it would be too late for Biden to fill the posts, and in North Carolina, after losing its super majority in the next term, the Republican legislature over-road a veto to strip power from the Democratic governor and attorney general, as well reducing the time to count votes. And Trump isn't even back in office yet.
