Republican Rep. Nancy Mace from my home state of South Carolina is mostly terrible, but I’m willing to acknowledge when she’s almost respectable. Yes, I’m generous to a fault.
After a week of regularly scheduled mass shootings, Mace ventured into the mouth of madness itself — “Fox News Sunday” — and suggested that Republicans might need to do more to stop gun violence than offer “thoughts and prayers.”
“Republicans can no longer be silent on this issue,” she said. “And it’s not about the Second Amendment — there are plenty of things that we can be doing besides offering prayers and silence.”
Wow, she sounds so reasonable! It’s like she thought she was on CNN.
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I should stress that Republicans haven’t exactly been silent on gun violence. That would be an improvement. No, last weekend, Republicans flocked to the National Rifle Association’s Legislative (In)Action Forum in Indianapolis, where North Dakota’s sitting Republican Gov. Kristi Noem boasted about her gun-toting not-yet-two-year-old granddaughter.
But Mace did have some good ideas about gun safety like she was some sort of common-sense-talking Democrat:
“Some sort of Amber alert, for example, to let the community know there’s been a shooting,” she said. “Strengthening our background checks is something that the vast amount of Americans support.”
On average, 90 percent of Americans — Republicans and Democrats — support background checks. Heck, more than 80 percent of gun owners support background checks. Unfortunately, these results collide into the Joey Lucas Rule Of Polling: Did you ask how much the voters care about the issue? Republicans know that their gun nut base consider any new regulation a deal breaker. However, the New York swing voters who freaked out over crime and put Republicans in control of the House last year apparently weren’t thinking about the next, inevitable mass shooting. This is why Republicans keep bending the knee to those NRA assholes.
Mace is still a Republican, so she offered the popular right-wing solution of imprisoning our children so that guns can still run free.
“Hardening our schools, churches, and synagogues so that there’s deterrence so that … a potential mass shooter enters a place they know that maybe they’re not gonna make it through because there’s bulletproof doors, bulletproof windows. Those kind of common sense things … “
South Carolina just approved permitless carry of handguns, so who knows who has a gun inside the locked room with the bulletproof doors? But she tried, OK? Just like last week, when Mace suggested that the Biden administration just ignore that right-wing hack Texas judge’s ruling blocking the sale of abortion drug, mifepristone.
“It’s not up to us to decide as legislators or even, you know, as the court system whether this is the right drug to use or not,” she told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins. “I agree with ignoring it at this point […] this thing should just be thrown out quite frankly.”
Wow, she sounds like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from New York and Sen. Ron Wyden from Oregon. That was a bolder stance from a South Carolina Republican than her gun position. She’s also openly denounced her state party’s attempt to straight-up execute anyone who tried to have an abortion.
“It is deeply disturbing to me as a woman and as a victim of rape that some in my home state want to give rapists more rights than women who’ve been raped,” Nancy tweeted in March. “And I don’t know why I have to say this, but it isn’t pro life to execute a woman who seeks an abortion after being raped.”
Twitter
When Twitter user Henry #3 Studios dismissed Mace as a “RINO,” she replied, “I’m a RINO for what? Opposing executions for women who seek abortion? That’s what makes me a RINO? Wow.”
The choo-choo train guy might have a tiny point, though. South Carolina Republicans are big on the death penalty. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster signed a bill in 2021 forcing death row inmates to choose between the electric chair and a firing squad if lethal injection drugs aren’t available. If Republicans truly consider abortion “infanticide,” then it’s not a leap from there to the gallows. Not to say we “told you so” and all, but we really did.
When Twitter user Wendy Nevarez thanked Mace for her stance, she replied, “The crazy thing is, I shouldn’t be lauded for ‘standing up.’ It’s just so strange this is where we are today that standing up means stating the obvious that executing women for abortions is bad and that I’m unique in this regard for saying that out loud. Just [nuts emoji].”
Mace also agreed with Twitter user Stacy Stateham, who “corrected” Mace’s original tweet to read that it “isn’t pro life to execute a woman who seeks an abortion” (without a qualifier). What’s interesting is that, based on their feeds, Stateham is a self-described “Never Trump Republican” and Nevarez is a liberal Democrat. Mace might resist the RINO label but she’d probably feel more comfortable in the “red dog” conservative Democrat/Bulwark subscriber world. Hey, if we can put up with Kyrsten Sinema for this long, we could probably make room for Nancy Mace.
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