Goodbye, Nancy Mace

The MAGA Toady's Political Career Is Finally Finished.

Tuesday night in South Carolina, Nancy Mace’s career ended. Running for governor in her home state, with three terms in Congress and near-universal name recognition, she finished fifth. She even lost her own home county of Charleston, in her own congressional district. In fact, she didn’t carry a single county in the state. In her concession speech, she said it herself: “Well, my time is up at the end of this year,” and announced she’s headed back to the private sector.

Now, I want to tell you why I’ve been thinking about her.

Rewind to January 7, 2021.

I was in a hospital bed with a heart that had stopped the day before, courtesy of a mob that beat me and tased me at the doors of the Capitol. And Nancy Mace, freshman congresswoman, sworn in three days earlier, went on CNN and said of Donald Trump: “His entire legacy was wiped out yesterday.” In her first-ever floor speech she said, “I believe we need to hold the President accountable. I hold him accountable for the events that transpired for the attack on our Capitol last Wednesday.”

For about a week, Nancy Mace told the truth. She’d been in that building when the mob came through it, and she’d seen what I and a few hundred other cops were holding back. And for a few days she talked like someone who understood exactly what it had cost.

I noticed.

Then she did the math that every Republican in Washington has done at some point in the last five years, and she got the answer most of them. Trump punished her one honest week by endorsing a primary challenger against her in 2022. Now, she survived that race. But instead of taking her survival as proof that she could win without Trump’s backing, she took it as a warning.

So she tried to crawl back. She made social media posts so desperate for Trump’s attention that his own base mocked them as “thirsty” and “so cringe.” It worked, briefly. In 2024, Trump endorsed the congresswoman.

Some in the political media saw Mace’s re-entry into Trump’s good graces as evidence that you could be welcomed back into the fold after defying MAGA. But you can’t—that’s what the last week proved.

When Mace ran for governor — the job she’d working toward her whole career at — Trump endorsed Pamela Evette, the lieutenant governor whose day-one loyalty had never lapsed. Evette and Attorney General Alan Wilson advanced to the runoff.

Now, Nancy Mace gave MAGA everything she had. She gave up whatever it cost her, privately, to grovel to the man whose mob had just trashed her workplace and nearly killed the cops defending it. She paid every installment to Trump on time for five years. And when she finally tried to redeem the loyalty she’d purchased, she discovered the fine print: in Trump’s movement, you can never clear the debt.

And I’d argue the thing MAGA never forgave her for is the only thing history will ever credit her with. The week she told the truth is the only week of her career that mattered. If she had held the line — if “I hold him accountable” hadn’t been opportunistic cheap talk — she’d have likely lost her seat in 2022. So what? She lost everything anyway, eight years slower and with none of her honor intact.

So this piece isn’t really addressed to Democrats, who will be tempted to spend a day enjoying the schadenfreude from Nancy Mace’s demise and never think about her again.

No, I’m talking to every Republican officeholder who knows Trump is ruining our country, but still stays silent anyway.

You know who you are.

Maybe you’re telling yourself that you’re playing a long game, that you’ll be there to rebuild after, that the loyalty you’re banking now will be honored later.

But the MAGA movement doesn’t work that way. Trump and his movement never forget the days you told the truth about them. If you stood up for even a moment, that means you might do so again. And, if it’s possible to resist Trump from within the conservative movement for even a moment, that’s too much of a risk to MAGA.

Now, if you say the truth and let the consequences come, you can tell your grandkids you did the right thing, win or lose your primary. You can sleep peacefully at night. As for Nancy Mace? I don’t know how she’s sleeping. I’m guessing that tonight, she’ll think about her one good week back in 2021. Then, she’ll wish she’d had more.