Nancy Mace's ridiculous stunt

Scarlet letter!

South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace was one of eight Republican House members to vote with Democrats to kick Kevin McCarthy out as Speaker last week.

On Tuesday night, as the Republican conference gathered to consider who should replace McCarthy, Mace caused quite the stir. Here’s why:

Yes, that’s Mace with a shirt that has a bright, scarlet — more on that in a second — “A” on it.

As you might guess (and as Mace desperately wanted), she was flocked by reporters who wanted to know the message she was sending.

She called the “A” her “scarlet letter,” adding: “This is my signal to others that I don’t answer to anybody up here. I only answer to the people back home. And I don’t care what you throw at me. I don’t care what the establishment throws at me.”

Ok, so, um, a bit of literary history is in order here. Mace is referencing Hester Prynne, the lead character in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter.”

Here’s the Spark Notes summary of the plot:

The story begins in seventeenth-century Boston, then a Puritan settlement. A young woman, Hester Prynne, is led from the town prison with her infant daughter, Pearl, in her arms and the scarlet letter “A” on her breast. A man in the crowd tells an elderly onlooker that Hester is being punished for adultery. Hester’s husband, a scholar much older than she is, sent her ahead to America, but he never arrived in Boston. The consensus is that he has been lost at sea. While waiting for her husband, Hester has apparently had an affair, as she has given birth to a child. She will not reveal her lover’s identity, however, and the scarlet letter, along with her public shaming, is her punishment for her sin and her secrecy.

So, like, not an exact comp there, Congresswoman Mace.

I assume what Mace is (trying to) channel is Prynne’s resoluteness in the face of withering criticism and judgment. Or that’s the story she told herself when she (or one of her advisers) thought it was a GREAT idea to put a big “A” on a white t-shirt.

Mace insisted that she wasn’t engaging in a publicity stunt. Perish the thought!

“I turn down more interviews than I actually do. And I don’t need to be performative,” Mace said, “because I am a serious legislator.”

Let me be clear: The idea that this stunt was aimed at anything other than drawing (more) press attention to her is, well, a joke.

When she voted to removed McCarthy last week, Mace was seen by many Republicans as an outlier. Unlike, say, Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, Mace wasn’t aligned with the House Freedom Caucus. In fact, she had cut a much more moderate figure in the House since winning a seat in 2020.

As POLITICO reported on her vote:

McCarthy and Mace didn’t always see eye to eye, but the California Republican had helped Mace secure her seat in Congress by pumping millions of dollars into her once-struggling campaign. Mace’s move to aggressively fundraise off her vote to bounce McCarthy is only intensifying her colleagues’ anger toward her.

“It’s disgraceful,” said Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), a longtime McCarthy ally.

“If the purpose is because it’s going to help me build my brand and gonna bring a little bit more money to my campaign,” Womack added of Mace, “then I think you need to question why you’re here.”

Yes, that.

In retrospect, Mace has much more in common with her 7 colleagues who voted to oust McCarthy than might appear at first glance. Like Gaetz and his ilk, she seems primarily interested — as Womack mentioned — in building her #brand than in, you know, serving in Congress.

She’s far from alone in that regard. The new model of success for Republicans — especially in the House — is Gaetz and Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene. Both are far more focused on getting on TV — and raising money as well as their social media profiles — than they are on moving up the leadership ladder or building relationships with their colleagues.

For Mace, though, her veering toward that end of the party is more unfortunate. Because she is someone with a massively compelling personal story — she was the first woman to graduate from The Citadel — who could actually be the sort of Republican elected official that the party so desperately needs right now.

She appears to have chosen a different path. More’s the pity.